imimmmf ^'f- 



PRINCIPLES AND METHODS 

OF 

TEACHING READING 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

N2W YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA 
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



PRINCIPLES AND METHODS 

OF 

TEACHING READING 



BY 

JOSEPH S. TAYLOR, Pd.D. 

/( 

DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, NEW YORK 

AUTHOR OF "ART OF CLASS MANAGEMENT AND DISCIPLINE" 

"COMPOSITION IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL," "WORD 

STUDY IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL," "GRADED 

MOVEMENT WRITING FOR BEGINNERS," ETC. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1912 

All rights reserved 



\^ 



v^/^C 



Copyright, 1912, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1912. 



SToTbioolJ $utl8 

J. S. Gushing Oo. —Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



s£aA31.G168 



PREFACE 

An artistic reading teacher is one of the most 
valuable assets of a school. She is as rare as 
wisdom, which " the gold and the crystal can 
not equal." Among a thousand instructors of 
youth how few there be who are cunning in 
the art of teaching beginners to read ! A prin- 
cipal who possesses one of these rare treasures 
can better afford to lose three capable assis- 
tants from the top of the school than this one 
at the bottom. It passes all understanding why 
school authorities continue to give the greatest 
rewards for the commonest of gifts and pro- 
vide no encouragement for the rarest. If, by 
any accident or effort or natural endowment, a 
teacher becomes an artist in a first-year grade, 
she can remain there only by sacrificing her 
pecuniary interest. In consequence of the con- 
ditions just mentioned, there is a steady exodus 
from the lower to the higher grades. Thus the 
principal is obliged to train large numbers of 



vi PREFACE 

raw recruits In low-grade work. The reading 
problem is the most important and the most 
difficult of all. A desire to contribute some 
small share of inspiration and guidance for this 
period of apprenticeship is responsible for the 
appearance of the present volume. 

The author has collected into convenient form 
opinions, practices, principles, methods, devices, 
and experimental discoveries, widely scattered in 
books and periodicals, which, he ventures to 
hope, will be useful to students of education as 
well as to teachers in the service. The first 
chapter deals with reading as a mental process. 
It traces the various steps by which a child 
learns to talk and shows that learning to read 
is essentially a matter of association. The sec- 
ond chapter analyzes the physiological factors 
involved in oral and written speech and gives the 
results of recent researches on eye movements 
in reading. Chapter III formulates the prin- 
ciples deduced from the studies of the first two 
chapters. These principles are the raw material 
of the reading method expounded in Chapter V. 
In the fourth chapter the ends which the read- 
ing teacher has in view in the several grades 



PREFACE vii 

of the school course are discussed. A sharp 
distinction is made between the mechanics of 
reading and reading as literature. Chapter V 
presents the details of method in reading. It 
undertakes to lay down the principles governing 
the most approved current practice, and tells 
the novice how to proceed in teaching sounds, 
phonograms, blends, and sight words. It treats 
reading under the dual aspect of impression and 
expression, and sets forth the elements and 
methods peculiar to each phase. The sixth 
chapter presents the results of a study made 
by the author on the amount of matter that 
may profitably be read in each of the eight years 
of an elementary school. The inferences are 
based upon the experience of some seven hun- 
dred teachers and about thirty thousand children. 
This study is followed by a discussion of the 
method of testing children in reading. The 
next chapter gives a brief summary of the hy- 
giene of reading, covering such items as paper, 
type, line, lighting, eye strain, and home study. 
A list of the authorities consulted in the prepa- 
ration of the book concludes the volume. 
The author gratefully acknowledges his in- 



viii PREFACE 

debtedness to Professor Robert MacDougall, of 
New York University, for reading the manu- 
script of the first two chapters and making valu- 
able suggestions ; to Dr. Edgar Dubs Shimer, 
District Superintendent of Schools, New York, 
for reading a portion of the manuscript and 
giving permission to quote from his personal 
letters; to Educational Review for permission 
to republish Chapter VI, which first appeared 
in its columns; to Charles Scribner's Sons for 
permission to reproduce an illustration from 
Ladd and Woodworth's Elements of Physio- 
logical Psychology ; and to Dr. J. McKeen 
Cattell for permission to reproduce three charts 
from Dearborn's Psychology of Reading. 

JOSEPH S. TAYLOR. 
New York, February i, 191 2. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 



The Psychology of Reading 



1 . Stages of Infantile Language 

(i) The Emotional Stage 

(fl) Importance of Gesture 

(2) The Babbling Stage 

(3) The Chattering Stage 

(4) The Talking Stage . 

2. Kinds of Words Used by Children 

3. Number of Words Used by Children 

4. Visual Language 

5. Reading a Form of Association . 

6. Laws of Association 

(i) Recency . 

(2) Frequency 

(3) Vividness 

(4) Congruity 

(5) Interest . 

(6) Voluntary Association 

7. Illustration of the Process of Learning 

8. Silent Reading . 

(i) Mental Economy 
(2) Increased Rapidity 



to Read 



PAGE 
I 

2 
2 
3 

5 
8 
8 

9 
II 
12 

14 
18 
18 
18 
18 
19 
19 
20 
21 

25 

28 
33 



CHAPTER II 

The Physiology of Reading 38 

1 . The Physical Basis of Association .... 38 

2. Localization of Brain Functions 40 

(i) Aphasias ........ 40 

ix 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



3. The Physical Basis of a Word . 

(i) How Words Get Recorded on the Brain 

4. Physical Basis of the Meaning of Words . 



5. The Relation of Left -and-Right-Handedness to Speech 53 



6. Muscular Movement Involved in Reading 

(i) The Eye Moves in Steps Across the Page 

(2) Steps Vary in Size in the Same Individual 

(3) Steps Vary in Different Individuals 

(4) Children take More Steps Than Adults . 

(5) Seeing Occurs During Pauses 

(6) Letters Are Seen in Groups . 

(7) Motor Images Also Represent Groups . 

(8) Grouping is a Matter of Development 

(9) The Eye Forms Short-Lived Motor Habits 

(10) The Proper Length of Line and Size of Type 

as Given by Dearborn 

(11) The Unit of Apperception Varies 

7. The Meaning of Words is Largely Motor 

8. Posture of Pupil 



PAGE 

44 
47 
51 



59 
59 
59 
60 
60 
61 
62 
64 
64 
65 

65 
65 
66 
68 



CHAPTER III 

Principles deduced from the Psychology and Physi- 
ology OF Reading (22) 70 

CHAPTER IV 

The Ends of Reading 77 

I . . Twofold Aspect of Reading 'j'j 

2. Primary Grades : The Mechanics of Reading . . TJ 

(i) Instant Recognition of the Speaking Vocabulary 77 

(2) Analysis of Words into Phonic Elements . . 78 

(3) Recognition, Representation, and Pronunciation 

of Phonic Elements . . . . .81 

(4) Synthesis of Phonic Elements into Words . 83 

(5) Meaning of Unfamiliar Words .... 84 

(6) Spelling . ., 85 



TABLE OF CONTENTS xi 



Primary Grades : Reading as Literature 

(i) What to Read 

(a) Interest — Summary of Conclusions 
(d) Other Qualities 

(c) Adaptations .... 
Grammar Grades : The Mechanics of Reading 

(i) Supplementary Reading , 

(a) Information .... 

(d) Inspiration .... 
(c) Taste 

Grammar Grades : Reading as Literature . 

(i) What to Read 

The High School 



8S 
85 
(II) 87 

93 

93 

99 

100 

lOI 

102 
103 
103 
103 
105 



CHAPTER V 

Methods of Teaching Reading .... 

1. The History of Method 

(i) Reading Material 

(2) Method 

2. The Beginnings of Reading .... 

(i) Some Definitions . . . . . 

(2) Principles Governing the Selection of Sight 

Words 

(3) Principles Governing the Selection of Sounds 

to be Taught 

(4) Teaching Sight Words .... 

(5) Teaching Sounds and Phonograms '. 

(6) Teaching the Blend 

(7) Correcting Errors 

(8) A Device for Beginners .... 



(i) Impression and Expression 

(2) Lyrics (Primary) 

(3) The Narrative Poem (Fourth Year) 

(a) Lucy Gray 

(4) The Total Impression 



129 
130 

131 

132 

135 



xli TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

(5) Word Study 136 

(6) Grammar, Figures, Allusions . . . .138 

(7) A Definite Aim 140 

4. Reading as Expression . . . . . . 141 

(i) Literature for the Ear 143 

(2) High School Reading . . . . . 149 

(3) S. H. Clark on Oral Reading . . . .150 

(a) ^<9r^j ; get, hold, give the thought . 150 
(J)) Grouping . . . . . • 151 
(c) Sentences: the unit of a complete thought 151 
{d) Subordination: an important principle 

of art . . . . . • 151 

{e) Transition . . . . . .152 

(/") Emphasis : the exact meaning dependent 

upon it 152 

{g) Emotion (sympathetic) : imagine yourself 

in a certain situation . . . -153 
(K) Emotion (personal) : here the emotion is 

real ... .... 153 

(?■) Contrast: a principle of all art . -154 
(7) Climax 154 

5. Class Criticism of Oral Reading 154 

(i) The Standard 155 

(2) Who is to Criticise, and How? . . -157 

6. Reading to Pupils ....... 158 

7. Memorizing 159 

8. Story Telling .162 

CHAPTER VI 

A Quantitative Study of Reading 165 

1. The Unit 166 

2. Number of Words Taught in First Year . . . 170 

3. Total Amount Read , 171 

4. The Books Used in Reading by Children . . .172 

5. Reading to Pupils 177 

6. Relation of Quantity, Quality, and Time . . . 181 

7. Dramatization . ., .184 



TABLE OF CONTENTS xiii 



CHAPTER VII 

PAGE 

A Reading Test 191 

1. Analysis of the Problem 192 

(i) Amount 192 

(2) Interpretation . 193 

(3) Reading Aloud 193 

(4) The Abstract 194 

(5) The Dictionary Habit 195 

2. A High Standard 195 

3. Every Pupil Tested . 196 

4. Relative Value of Reading 197 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Hygiene of Reading 199 

1. Sufficient Light 199 

2. Tinge and Surface of Paper . . . . . 202 

3. Illustrations 204 

4. Length of Line . 205 

5. Size of Type . . 208 

6. Eye-Strain 211 

(i) Diseases of the Eye 212 

(2) The School Doctor 214 

(3) Home-Study 215 

7. Literary Style 216 

CHAPTER IX 

Bibliography 221 

CHAPTER X 

Topics for Discussion 226 

Index . . , . . . . . . . . 233 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



1 . The " Signs " of Reading 

2. The Process of Learning to Read 

3. The Process of Learning to Read 










PAGE 

IS 
22 

23 


4. Key to Strange Alphabet 

5. Brain Localization . . . 










22 
43 


6. Reading Pauses 










60 


7. Reading Pauses 










61 


8. Reading Pauses . . 
g. A Page of the New England Primer 
lo. Accommodation in Vision 










62 
III 
212 



THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF 
TEACHING READING 

CHAPTER I 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 

Language is the joint product of heredity and 
education. The child is born with certain instincts 
which are the basis of linguistic development. We 
may distinguish, among others, the following im- 
pulses leading to speech : — 

The Expressive Impulse, a tendency to embody 
attitude or meaning in plastic or linguistic activities. 

The Social Impulse, the tendency to exhibit such 
expression to an appreciative audience. Professor 
Dewey calls this the "greatest of all educational 
resources." ^ 

The Imitative Impulse, the tendency to imitate 
Knguistic sounds. Primarily this is not voluntary 
or telic imitation, but is largely reflex. 

1 The School and Society, John Dewey, University of Chicago Press, 
1899, p. 58- 

B I 



2 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

The Play Impulse, Or the tendency to vary and 
extend speech sounds in an experimental way for 
amusement. 

The kind of sounds a child finally adopts as his 
language depends upon his environment. Imita- 
tion is the controlling factor here. This is the case 
even among the lower animals. "So inadequate," 
says Tracy/ "is heredity alone, that the child will 
not learn the language of its parents unless he be in 
the society of those who employ it. If brought up 
among savages, he will speak their language; if 
among wolves, he will howl." Alfred Russell Wal- 
lace says, "Young birds never have the song peculiar 
to their species, if they have not heard it ; whereas 
they acquire very easily the song of any other bird 
with which they are associated." ^ ' 

I. Stages of Infantile Language. — Various stages 
in the development of language may be distinguished 
as follows : (i) The Emotional Stage, (2) The Bab- 
bUng Stage, (3) The Chattering Stage, (4) The Talk- 
ing Stage. 

(i) The Emotional Stage. — The child comes into 
the world with a cry of pain. The cry is his only 

1 The Psychology of Childhood, Frederick Tracy, D. C. Heath & Co., 
p. 117. ^ Natural Selection. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 3 

language, and is used for the expression of his feelings. 
A little later this cry is differentiated into several 
varieties, such as the voice of anger, the wail of 
disappointment, and the cry of physical pain. Fur- 
ther on come cries, screams, gurglings, and cooings 
indicative of energy, pleasure, or contentment. 
Children only a few months old are sensitive to the 
emotional expressions of others. The tone of the 
voice will soothe or irritate, exhilarate or depress 
them. The emotional language which thus serves 
to establish an understanding between a mother and 
her child is one of the beautiful mysteries of mother- 
hood. Thus the emotional language gradually ap- 
proaches the intellectual stage. The child learns to 
vary his grunts and squeals and cries and coos so as 
to express fear, surprise, desire, satisfaction, assent, 
question. Another element of fundamental impor- 
tance is now added to the linguistic outfit in the form 
of gesture to accompany the voice. 

{a) Importance of Gesture. — By means of tone, 
emphasis, inflection, and gesture, the child manages 
to express nearly all his feelings, ideas, and wishes 
before he has learned a single word ; and by the same 
means he interprets to a considerable extent the 
feehngs and wishes of others. Throughout hfe the 



4 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

same vocal elements and gesture remain as vital 
auxiliaries of speech. Few of us realize how much 
gesture enters into the personality and language of 
people, especially of people who have no written 
language ; but even among the civilized, whole races 
are characterized by the number and varieties of 
their gestures. It is almost impossible to imagine 
a non-gesticulating Frenchman. It has been said 
of the Arabs that they more than double the mean- 
ing of their words by the piquancy of their gestures. 
Delsarte analyzed speech into three elements, — 
voice, gesture, articulation. Voice (inflection), he 
says, is the language of the sensitive nature, or physi- 
cal life ; gesture is the language of emotion ; articu- 
lation is the language of reason. "In considering 
the two languages of emotion, the verbal and the 
pantomimic, the latter is revelatory of the true man ; 
while the verbal is more or less artificial. It takes 
many words to say what a single look reveals. 
Gesture is the lightning, speech the thunder. . . . 
Gesture shows the emotional condition from which 
the words flow, and justifies them." ^ 

Gesture language, however, is not limited to the 
expression of emotion. It is employed both by the 

1 Delsarte System of Expression, Genevieve Stebbins, N. Y., 1889, p. 170. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 5 

child and by primitive man to convey knowledge. 
Tyler says that the language of gesture is about 
the same all over the world. "Mallery brought to- 
gether some Utah Indians and a deaf mute, who 
gave them a long account of a marauding expedition, 
followed by a dialogue ; they understood each other 
perfectly. . . . The language of analytical gesture 
is thus a substitute for spoken language; ... its 
syntax resembles that of deaf-mutes." ^ 

(2) The Babbling Stage. — After the instinctive 
utterances already mentioned comes a period of 
babbling, when the child uses his vocal organs as a 
plaything. This stage occurs in the second and 
third quarters of the first year. Nature impels the 
child to exercise his vocal powers as a preparation 
for speech-learning. In a random (purposeless) 
way he will thus make nearly every sound in lan- 
guage over and over again. The babbling does not 
take the place of the earlier mode of expression, but 
is added to it. Toward the end of the first year, 
after a child has made coimtless random sounds, he 
has a stock of motor images of vocal utterance that 
enables him to reproduce the sounds he hears in a 

^ The Evolution of General Ideas, Th. Ribot, The Open Court Publish- 
ing Co., 1899, p. SI. 



6 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

semi-reflex way. The following illustration of the 
babbling age is taken from my diary of a little girl. 
On the first anniversary of her birth I find this 
record : — 

"Constantly babbling." 

" Understands — ' Give me a kiss ' ; ' Go to Papa ' ; 
*Go to Mamma' ; 'How tall is K. ?'" 

At the age of one year and twenty-one days this 
entry was made : — 

"Is making rapid progress in the understanding of 
language. The following expressions are under- 
stood : — 

"'Get your stocking/ 'Bring Mamma your shoe/ 
'Give it to Papa/ 'K. dance/ 'Take your doll and 
lie down/ ' Give that to Julia ' (she had torn a piece 
of paper off the shelf cover; her mother said, 'Now 
go and give that to Julia.' She marched off to the 
dining room and held the paper up to Julia) ; 
'Where's the baby?' 'Put your hand through the 
hole.' (This in dressing.)" 

Up to this point she had used very few words of 
her own. Comprehension of language precedes use. 
Most of her utterances up to the age of one year 
were of the babbling kind, such as the following, 
recorded on the three hundred and fourth day : — 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 7 

"Gaa-gaa, etc. 

"Daa-daa, etc. 

"Baba. 

"Baby. 

"Gut-tha (th=as in the). 

"A-a-a-a-a- (with an accent on each). 

"Ta-ta (long sustained, with varying pitch)." 

Out of the spontaneous babbHng grows the no 
less spontaneous imitation of sounds. Instead of re- 
peating chance sounds, he now imitates nearly every 
sound he hears. This phase is illustrated by the 
following record of K. : — 

^^ Thirteen months. — To-day K. said 'apple.' She 
also says 'good, good,' and something that sounds 
like 'Julia' without the J." 

During the fourteenth month these expressions 
are found : — 

"Boy" and "bow-wow." 

"Dicken" for "chicken." 

"Thank you" (without the th). 

"Tries to hum a tune that Julia sings, and succeeds 
in making out enough of the air to distinguish it 
plainly." 

"She attempts to say almost everything now, and 
is constantly chattering." 



8 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

(3) The Chattering Stage. — And thus we have 
reached the third, or word-learning, stage of Hnguis- 
tic progress. Kirkpatrick says this phase may begin 
in the first year, but is not usually very marked till 
the last half of the second year. In the case of K. 
the point was reached at the very threshold of the 
second year. In the beginning, names are learned 
by associating the sound with the object, quality, 
or act denoted. In every case the association is 
assisted by circumstances, such as gesture, facial 
expression, inflection of the voice, and the like. The 
words that a child uses at this time frequently stand 
for phrases or entire sentences. Only that portion 
of a thought that needs special emphasis is ex- 
pressed in words. All the rest is understood from 
such auxiliaries of speech as tone, inflection, gesture, 
the presence of the object, and the performance of 
an act. For instance, K. says, "Up! " when she 
desires to be lifted; "Down!" when she wants to 
get off your lap. "Dinne" means "I want my 
dinner." " Dinna yedda " means " Dinner is ready." 

(4) The Talking Stage. — This is the last, or sen- 
tence-making, epoch of language acquisition. Prog- 
ress from the preceding stage consists in substituting 
words for what was previously indicated or under- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING g 

stood by tone or gesture ; and also in a better mental 
grasp of the relations of different parts of speech, and 
of words that express these relations. For in- 
stance, when K. was a year and a half old, she used 
this sentence: "Give me ga!" meaning "Give me 
the glass." This is a complete sentence containing 
a verb, and is one of the very earliest uses of the 
personal pronoun of the first person. When, about 
the same time, she was dressed ready to go for a 
walk, she said, " Come on! " When she was through 
with her dinner she called out, "I done." Even 
subjective expressions denoting emotions begin thus 
early by imitation, perhaps sometimes without full 
comprehension. Thus K. at the end of eighteen 
months brought her little bath-tub into my study 
one day and tried to sit down in it. She failed and 
nearly fell over, then she walked away, exclaiming, 
"0 dea!" On another occasion she expressed sur- 
prise by saying, "Doodness " (goodness). 

2. Kinds of Words used by Children. — As to the 
kind of words a child naturally learns first, Tracy 
has collected important information.- He gives a 
summary of the vocabularies of a number of children 

^ The Psychology of Childhood, Frederick Tracy, Heath & Co., 1896, 
p. 117. 



lo THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

under three years of age, comprising five thousand, 
four hundred words. Of these — 
60 per cent are nouns. 
20 per cent are verbs. 
9 per cent are adjectives. 
5 per cent are adverbs. 
2 per cent are prepositions. 
2 per cent are pronouns. 
1.7 per cent are interjections. 
0.3 per cent are conjunctions. 
Professor Kirkpatrick ^ has determined that of 
the words in the EngKsh language as foimd in a dic- 
tionary — 

60 per cent are nouns. 
II per cent are verbs. 
22 per cent are adjectives. 
5.5 per cent are adverbs. 
From this it appears that the number of verbs em- 
ployed by a child is relatively larger than the num- 
ber he employs in adult life. It must also be remem- 
bered that a child imitates movements before sounds, 
and expresses many actions by gesture rather than 
by words. Furthermore many words used by a 
child that have the appearance of other parts of 

^ Tracy, op. cit., p. 146. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING ii 

speech are in reality verbs (or at least embody ac- 
tion-ideas). Thus in the case of K., "up" meant 
"Please take me up"; "down" meant "I want 
to get off your knee"; "dink" meant "I want a 
drink of water." With these allowances made, it 
is evident that the verbs in a child's early vocabu- 
lary are relatively much more numerous than the 
table would indicate, and possibly three or four 
times as numerous as in the case of adult language. 

These facts confirm all other studies of children 
as showing the importance of motor activity and the 
motor idea in primary education. 

3. The Number of Words used by Children. — It is 
said that children rarely learn to walk and to talk 
at the same time. Walking usually precedes talk- 
ing. Hence language-learning is not prominent till 
after the middle of the second year. "At two years 
of age a child's vocabulary may not exceed a score 
of words ; but is likely to number frorii two to four 
hundred and may reach the surprising figure of ten 
or fifteen hundred." ^ Between two and four, prog- 
ress in acquiring new words is usually somewhat 
irregular. After a child has learned to read with 

^ E. A. Kirkpatrick, Fundamentals of Child Stvdy, Macmillan, 1903, 
p. 232. 



12 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

some facility, a desire to know what is in books 
affords a powerful stimulus for the acquisition of 
new words. Kirkpatrick says a thousand new words 
a year would be a low estimate for a youth, and ac- 
cording to his investigations a high school graduate 
may know the meaning of twenty or thirty thousand 
words. 

4. Visual Language. — Thus far we have consid- 
ered the psychology of heard and spoken language 
prior to the school age. We have, in other words, 
tried to represent in psychological terms the linguis- 
tic condition of the child when he presents himself 
in school for the purpose of learning how to compre- 
hend language through the eye and how to express 
it through the hand. The common names of the 
two new processes are reading and writing. 

There is a vast difference between oral language 
and visual language. Oral speech is a fundamental 
psychological and physiological fact. No speech- 
less race of men has yet been found. The human 
spirit shows in the faculty of speech a limitless power 
of creation. The so-called " bow-wow " theory of the 
origin of language (phonetic imitations of natural 
sounds) is discounted by the fact that words in differ- 
ent languages representing the same thing are different. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 13 

Between man and every other animal the gift of 
speech puts an immeasurable distance. "Our rever- 
ence for the nobiHty of manhood," observes Huxley, 
"will not be lessened by the knowledge that man is 
in substance and in structure one with the brutes, 
for he alone possesses the marvelous endowment of 
intelligent and rational speech. Thus he stands as 
on a mountain top far above the level of his humble 
fellows and transfigured from his lower nature, by 
reflecting here and there a ray from the infinite 
source of truth." ^ 

These remarks apply, however, only to spoken 
language. Visual language is purely conventional, 
and is possessed only by civilized or semi-civilized 
peoples. It is not the direct outcome of the instinc- 
tive impulses from which spoken language is devel- 
oped. If visual speech were governed by instincts 
as potent as those of oral speech, the child would 
learn to read spontaneously. Neither has. the neces- 
sity of communication much force in the case of 
reading, for the child already has an easy and ade- 
quate means of expression in his oral language. 
About the only instincts that the reading teacher can 
at first appeal to effectively are the play instinct and 

^ Man's Place in Nature, Thomas Huxley, pp. 119, 132. 



14 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

the social desire for approbation. Hence progress 
in visual language, even with a teacher, is much 
slower for a time than progress in learning oral lan- 
guage without any formal teaching. 

5. Reading a Form of Association. — When a child 
enters school he has already acquired the use of oral 
language. This means that he has associated with 
his concepts certain sounds which we call oral words, 
and certain muscular images of the vocal organs as 
these are employed in uttering words. These three 
things, the auditory image, the motor image, and the 
concept, are so indissolubly associated that any one 
is usually sufficient to call up the other two without 
conscious effort. Learning to read as a mental pro- 
cess is nothing more than the introduction of an 
additional factor into this group of associations in 
the form of a visual image, which we call the written 
or printed word. The four factors have been called 
the "signs" ^ employed in reading. The accom- 
panying diagram illustrates graphically the relation 
of these signs. 

Since reading is essentially a matter of association, 
we shall have to ascertain next what psychology has 

^Psychology in the Schoolroom, Dexter and Garlick, Longmans, 
Green & Co., 1898, p. 126. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 



IS 



to tell us about that process. Association is an in- 
stance of the great law of nervous habit. Things 
repeated in the same order tend to unroll themselves 



VISXIALSIGN 

~ THBWORD -*< 

DOG 



VOCAL SIGN 

POSITION OF 

ORGANSOrSPEHH 



AUDITORY SIGN 

SOUND OF 

WORD DOG 



MMENTAL5IGN 
THECONCEfT 




Fig. I. 
Adapted from Dexter and Garlick's Psychology in the Schoolroom. 

again automatically, as, for instance, the nonsense 
rhymes used by children in counting off — 

^' Ana mana mona mike 
Barcelona bona strike" ^ 

. If you have ever been out in the deep snow, you 

^ Many ideas and illustrations of association given here are borrowed 
from William James, The Principles of Psychology, Holt & Co., 1893, 
Vol. I, Chap. XIV. 



1 6 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

know the difference between following the beaten 
path and making a new one. Nervous impulses 
have the same experience in getting themselves prop- 
agated through the central nervous system. They 
always tend to discharge themselves in the direction 
of least resistance; and this is the beaten path. 
Association is the psychological effect "of the physi- 
cal fact that nerve currents propagate themselves 
through those tracts of conduction which have been 
most in use." If we think of the cause, we call the 
process habit; if we think of the effect, we call it 
association. 

The laws of association are sometimes distin- 
guished to the number of three or four, but it is prob- 
able that all might be reduced to two — contiguity 
and similarity. If certain objects or events are ex- 
perienced in the same place or at the same time, and 
one of the group is reproduced at a subsequent time, 
the rest of the group tend to reappear, also. In the 
same way, objects that resemble each other tend to 
reappear together, even though the two were never ex- 
perienced together before. Referring to our reading 
diagram, we may say that if the visual sign, the vocal 
sign, the auditory sign, and the concept or image 
have been simultaneously in consciousness often 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 17 

enough, any one will be sufficient to recall the re- 
maining three. Or, in other words, if the written 
word, the spoken word, and the heard word have 
been perfectly associated with the idea that they 
all express, the idea will recall all the modes of expres- 
sion, and the three forms of the word will each recall 
the idea. " A child who comes across a difficult word 
{e.g. hippopotamus) has merely a more or less im- 
perfect visual sign. This does not call up any vocal 
(or motor) sign (he cannot say the word) ; it does 
not call up any auditory sign (he is unaware whether 
another scholar does or does not pronounce the word 
correctly). It is needless to say that no mental 
sign is called up (the word has no meaning to him). 
A child who can read a given word (e.g. emu), but 
does not know its meaning, is able to call up all the 
signs except the mental one. The whole art of read- 
ing aloud correctly and intelligently consists in being 
able to reproduce all these signs simultaneously." ^ 
If we meet a familiar face on the street, or a familiar 
flower or bird in the field, but cannot remember the 
name of the friend or object, then we have the mental 
sign, but lack all the others. In reading we look at 
words and endeavor to make out their meaning. In 

1 Dexter and Garlick, op. cit., p. 126. 



1 8 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

composition we have meaning and try to find words 
to embody it. The two processes are complementary 
to each other. And in order to form deep and last- 
ing associations between the words and their mean- 
ing, reading and writing should go hand in hand. 

6. Laws of Association. — Certain mental factors 
are important in determining the predominant ele- 
ments of association and influencing the direction of 
the mental movement. These factors, which give 
rise to the various phases of association known as 
laws of similarity, contrast, etc., are as follows : — 

(i) Recency. — Other things being equal, the ex- 
perience that is most recent is likely to determine 
the course of mental movement. If I sit down in 
idle meditation after an exciting day's work or pleas- 
ure, my revery is likely to be occupied with the 
scenes through which I have recently passed. 

(2) Frequency. — To the preceding factors must 
also be added the frequency of connection between 
the presentations that are associated. If "a" has 
been associated with "Z>" twice and "c" but once, 
other things being equal, "a" is a better clew for the 
recallof "Z)" than"c"is. 

(3) Vividness. — The intensity of the first impres- 
sion also is an important factor of the subsequent 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 



19 



recall. This may depend on the nature of the stimu- 
lus, as a portentous sound, or my interest in the sub- 
ject, or the emotion accompanying the impression. 
If you have ever witnessed a railroad accident, all 
accounts of such accidents will thereafter make a 
deep impression upon you. If you have ever visited 
the Palace of Versailles, any subsequent reference 
to Marie Antoinette will excite a lively interest. 
The art of creating vividness in teaching, therefore, 
would seem to consist in connecting your instruc- 
tion with some significant experience of the pupil. 

(4) Congruity. — A fourth element is what James 
calls the congruity of the emotional tone of an im- 
pression and our mood. If ^p\x are in good spirits, 
a funny story makes a stronger impression upon you 
than it would if you were sad. If the mood and the 
emotion are of tt^same tone, they support each 
other. If they are opposite in character, they tend 
to annihilate each other. 4Bhus, an interesting novel 
has small charms for a man who is seasick. 

(5) Interest. — That in which we are most inter- 
ested makes the deepest impression on our minds 
and is most likely to abide. Just as in logl^ing ^p, 
landscape certain features are picked out for atten- 
tion, while others are ignored, so in recalling objects 



20 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

and events, there is an unconscious partiality in the 
selection of elements, which in time changes the ob- 
ject. This is why a great man seems greater after 
death than before. In recalling him after he is gone, 
we are prone to dwell on his good qualities and to 
forget his frailties. In the course of time our idea 
of the man is transformed. Washington is already 
a demigod; Lincoln is fast becoming one. While 
they lived they were vilified as much as any living 
public man of to-day. 

(6) Voluntary Association. — All the association 
thus far spoken of is involuntary. This is very im- 
portant and all-potent with young children. But 
thinking may be defined as (fontroUed or voluntary 
association. In reverv and in memory association 
takes place in accoraance wfth its own l^ws. In 
studying and thinking we maldpa conscious effort 
to vivify and intensify some one element above 
others, and in this way tie determine the direction 
of the next associations. The skill of a teacher is 
shown by her ability to keep children in the control 
of their associations. When they lose this control, 
t^Pfeay tjlipir minds wander, or they are not paying 
attention. They are paying attention, but not to 
the teacher. Their mental movement is revery, and 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 21 

they sit and inwardly gaze at a panorama of imagery. 
The associations control them. Their eyes and ears 
are wide open, but they see and hear nothing. When 
they control their mental movements, the associa- 
tions follow the words of the teacher, and all else is 
suppressed. 

7. Illustration of the Process of Learning to Read. — 
James defines reading, psychologically, as "an inter- 
rupted and protracted recall of sounds by sights 
^ich have always been coupled with them in the 
past." ^ This definition is incomplete, inasmuch 
as it leaves out two important elements of a com- 
plete process of reading, — the motor image and the 
conceptual element. As a matter of fact, it de- 
scribes a good deal of so-called reading, which con- 
sists simply in converting sight-symbols into sound- 
symbols, with little or no appreciation of the meaning 
of what is read. The pronunciation of a series of words 
in a foreign language of whose meaning one is wholly 
ignorant would satisfy every demand of the defini- 
tion. The various elements of the complex experi- 
ence for which a word stands may of course be 
excited in unequal degrees, but each element is suffi- 
cient ordinarily to excite all the rest in some degree. 

10^. «7., p. 557. 



22 THE PRINCIPLES OF lEACHING READING 



When one is simply glancing over a page in so- 
called silent reading, the vocal element seems to be 

missing, but experi- 
ment proves that it 
is quite impossible 
to suppress the 
motor images of 
words, and even the 
actual movements 
of the vocal coiAl 
Children and unedu- 
cated persons usu- 
ally pronounce all 
the words, even when they read for themselve*lone; 
and in cases where muscular movements cannot be de- 
tected by ordinary observation or by consciousness, 
their presence is revealed by delicate instruments. In 

* Following is a key to the characters used in Figs. 2 and 3 : — 







1. J 

1. LE > 
3. LJV 
if . D E 1 
5.>0Q 
6. r 


7. 


r 


>nO J LE> 


8. 


r 


>Da J LJV 


7. 


r 


>DD J DEI 



Fig. 



isi 


b 


c 


d 


e 


f 





h 


i 



. J 


.k 


.1 


• 


n 

• 




• 


.P 


."! 


r 

• 




Fig. 4. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 



23 



fact, as a clew for revival, the motor element in 
the association of a word complex seems to me 
to be the most potent of all. This conclusion 
is confirmed by experiments on memory with 
and without motor 





HELL 




UECU 



I. J 

i.nj> 

3.UJVD nj> J 3ELL 

V;ujvq nj> J urvv< 

6". UJVO nj> J UEEU 



Fig. 3. 



images. 

In order to ob- 
serve, if possible, 
what happens in the 
mind when one is 
learning to read, let 
us take the unfa- 
miliar symbols in 
the diagram (Fig. 2). 
Suppose we say that 
no. I represents the word a, no. 2 represents the 
word cow, no. 3 represents cat, no. 4 is dog, no. 
5 is see, no. 6 is /. Then see how much time 
and effort are required to read the sentences 
numbered 7, 8, 9. Make a similar experiment 
with Fig. 3. The oral words or auditory symbols 
are all familiar and thoroughly associated with 
the mental signs or meanings that they represent, 
and also with the motor images (vocal signs) of oral 
expression. 



24 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

What we have now to do is to introduce and incor- 
porate these visual signs with the three other signs 
already established in our mental experience. The 
more manifold we make the clews that radiate from 
our new symbol, the greater will be the chance of 
recalling the group of which it forms a part. If we 
associate the visual sign with the vocal sign only, 
as, for instance, in learning to pronounce a foreign 
word of whose meaning we are ignorant, it would 
require a great many repetitions to insure its auto- 
matic recall. If we add to the vocal, sign the mental 
sign, we increase the chances of recall by connect- 
ing more of our experience with the new symbol. If 
to the mental sign we add the actual presentation, 
as, for example, a real cow, or a model or a picture of 
a cow, the total experience is further enriched and 
deepened by interest and other emotions, all of 
which constitute clews of recall. By an appeal to 
a child's love of muscular and play activity, the ex- 
perience may become stO more significant. This 
could be done by having the word printed on a card 
and kept in a box with other words, then, on exhibit- 
ing an object or picture, calling upon the pupil to 
select the word that represents the object. Fi- 
nally, one of the most powerful of clews is the muscu- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 25 

lar image of writing the word after it is known. It 
is evident, therefore, that whatever reading may be 
as a complete process, teaching a child to read is a 
good deal more than converting sights into sounds. 

8. Silent Reading. — The principle enunciated 
above, that the more manifold we make the clews 
that radiate from the visual symbol, when the child 
is learning to read, the more efficacious will be our 
teaching, has been disputed by some authorities. 
For instance, Mr. M. V. O'Shea^ says that in 
reading, the auditory and vocal processes should be 
reduced to a minimum. He admits that we have to 
deal with the original tendency to interpret visual 
verbal forms through auditory and vocal forms; 
that these processes are probably never completely 
short-circuited; and that they continue as a sort of 
" interior " speech. But he thinks it highly important 
to develop in the pupil the habit of reading rapidly 
and getting his cue as to meaning principally through 
the eye. Rapid interpretation rather than correct 
pronunciation is the prime test of successful reading. 
Huey^ goes a step farther, and says it is not nec- 

^ Linguistic Development and Education, The Macmillan Co., 1907, 
p. 223. 

' The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, The Macmillan Co., 1908, 
P- 349- 



26 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

essary for a child to pronounce correctly or to pro- 
nounce at all, at first, the new words. If he grasps 
approximately the total meaning of a sentence in 
which the new word stands, he has read the sentence. 
Even if the child substitutes words of his own for 
some that are in the book, the reading should be 
approved. He also says in another connection that 
"a purely visual reader is not an impossibility"; 
but admits that practically he has never found the 
purely visual type. Speaking on the point under 
discussion. Dr. Edgar Dubs Shimer, a keen psycholo- 
gist and joint author of The Progressive Road to 
Reading,^ wrote me privately the following exposition 
of his theory of mental economy in learning to 
read : ^ — 

"I am seeking to keep the reality images (mean- 
ings, ideas, concepts) in the focus of consciousness, 
and all other images in subconsciousness. If the 
visual can be so vividly associated with the reality 
image that the latter is evoked immediately without 
interpolation of the vocal, the pupil will read with 
power as compared with the one who must take an 
indirect course from the visual to the vocal, and 

^ Silver, Burdett & Co., New York, 1909. 

2 Dr. Shimer has kindly permitted me to quote from this correspond- 
ence. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 27 

then perhaps even to the auditory, before reaching 
securely the reaHty image. The methods in the 
Progressive Road make for proper condensation 
in the association series. This is the secret of the 
supplementary stories for seat work. You know 
how difficult it is to arouse a reality image by a 
visual word image alone. In some cases it may be 
necessary that the vocal motor, or the auditory, or 
even both be aroused in order to bring the reality 
image into being. The superfluous associations of 
vocal and auditory images I desire to suppress, unless 
they really contribute to establish or make clear the 
reality image. Some teachers think that when a 
child has read an action sentence and then per- 
formed the proper action, the silent reading shows 
that a direct association was made between the vis- 
ible symbol and the meaning. I need not tell you 
that ninety-nine times out of a hundred the visible 
symbols led to their vocal motor and auditory word 
images before the reality was reached. All I want 
to insist upon is that economy of effort and increase 
of power are secured by making the path from visual 
symbol to the idea as direct as possible. If it can 
be done, let the agglutination of the visible symbol 
with the reality be so close that no other word image 



28 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

can be interpolated. . . . The only way I have 
found to acccompHsh this has been to supply choice 
and appropriate text for reading adapted to the 
child's interest, and to try through this intense in- 
terest to provide opportunity for the visual symbol 
to make by degrees for itself the same swift, imme- 
diate, and indissoluble association with the reality 
that the spoken word has. . . . Some one has well 
said that words are like panes of glass, to be looked 
through, not to be looked at." 

The proposal to inhibit the vocal image raises a 
very serious question. In favor of inhibition is 
cited an assumed economy of mental activity and an 
alleged increase of rapidity in silent reading. Let 
us examine these arguments and see what they prove. 

(i) Mental Economy. — Is it true that the direct 
and single association (if such were possible) be- 
tween the visual word image and its meaning saves 
the mind useless labor ? When the child is learning 
oral speech, we have already seen that instinct impels 
him to imitate every sound he hears, both before 
and after he attaches meaning to sounds. Nature 
in this case does not stop with the mere association 
of sound and sense, but causes every sound to seek 
immediate expression. Speech at this stage is a 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 29 

sort of reflex mechanism, and every sound stimulus 
runs through Broca's Convolution to the mouth. 
From the point of view of development, expression 
seems to be an indispensable link in the chain of 
association. What a child hears he utters; what 
he knows he tells. When he has no companions, he 
talks to himself or his toys. Ideas that flit across 
his mind invariably seek outlet through some form 
of expression. So it appears that nature finds it 
impossible to educate a child without language; and 
language means commxmion, — giving as well as 
receiving ideas. Has not one of the most serious 
charges brought against the school of the past and 
present been this : — that it is organized chiefly for 
listening; that it requires the child to be in a pas- 
sive, receptive attitude, whereas he never individu- 
alizes himself until he acts or expresses himself 
through the muscular system? Why, then, if ex- 
pression is so necessary, should an exception be made 
in the case of reading? Why should a chfld try to 
inhibit vocal utterance when nature seems to urge 
him to practise it? "A series of experiments," says 
Colvin, "recently concluded by the Department of 
Psychology at the University of Illinois, in which 
about eighty school chfldren were tested, seems defi- 



30 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

nitely to show that learnmg for all grades is consid- 
erably facilitated by allowing pupils to study in a 
whisper." ^ In a monograph on "ideational types," 
containing a series of original experiments and a 
review of ten well-known studies on the same theme, 
Mr. William Parker Wharton comes to this conclu- 
sion: "In the presentation of material by visual, 
auditory, visual-motor, visual-auditory, and audi- 
tory-motor methods, the best results, for correct, 
orderly reproduction by primary memory, are ob- 
tained by the visual-motor (articulatory) method, 
and the poorest by the purely acoustic method." ^ 
Dr. Shimer himself witnesses to the fact that, ninety- 
nine times out of a hundred, the vocal image is pres- 
ent; and experimental study in the laboratory 
proves that it is absolutely impossible to inhibit the 
muscular movement of speech when we think. In 
short, words are essentially motor.^ As soon as they 
appear in consciousness, they fly to the lips. There 
are, of course, types of mind in which the visual, the 

^ The Learning Process, S. S. Colvin, The Macmillan Co., 1911, p. 168. 

^ Experimental Study of Ideational Types, William Parker Wharton, 
Thesis for Doctorate in Philosophy, New York University, 191 1. 

' "The printed or written word is a symbol not of an idea, but of a 
spoken word. The normal process of interpretation seems, therefore, 
to be from the printed word to the spoken word, and thence to the ' idea.' ' ' 
— The Educative Process, W. C. Bagley, The Macmillan Co., 1905, p. 318. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 



31 



auditory, or the motor element predominates; but 
in no case is it possible to eliminate muscular images 
of expression from our thinking. Why, then, should 
we try? Goethe has well said: "What you do not 
speak of, you will seldom accurately think of." 
But while I doubt the validity of Dr. Shimer's ex- 
planation, I am a firm believer in the efficacy of his 
method. The economy which results from his in- 
tensely interesting subject-matter comes, in my judg- 
ment, from the vividness of the impression. Other 
things being equal, memory bears a direct ratio to 
the strength of the stimulus. If you come across 
a strange word, like aphasia, in the course of a day's 
desultory reading, you may not remember the term 
ten minutes later; but if the same word happens 
to be the name of the disease that suddenly over- 
took your father this morning at nine o'clock, you 
are not likely to forget it as long as you live. The 
stories in the Progressive Road are so closely 
fitted to the mind and heart of a child that he is 
eager to read them; and he spontaneously makes 
the effort to overcome difficulties, which in some 
reading systems must be mastered by dull routine. 
To quote Goethe once more: "In every new de- 
partment one must, in the first place, begin again 



32 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACfflNG READING 

as a child, throw a passionate interest over thie sub- 
ject ; take pleasure in the shell till one has the happi- 
ness to arrive at the kernel." Now, the mechanics 
of reading are the shell, and the passionate interest 
a child has in the right kuid of subject-matter en- 
ables him to take pleasure in the shell while he is 
looking for the kernel. And in this procedure there 
is mental economy, because the activity is spontane- 
ous, and without a sense of effort or fatigue. In the 
words of John Dewey we may say that reading has 
become a means of self-expression. 
^ From further correspondence had with Dr. Shimer 
it appears that so far as the actual procedure of 
teaching is concerned, he lays as much stress upon 
multiple-sense appeal, and especially upon motor 
experience, as I do. For example, he says: "The 
teacher's real work [is] truly along your lines of pro- 
cedure, . . . and I refer again to the Manual of 
Progressive Road to show that not an avenue of 
approach [is] neglected. Not only the auditory and 
the vocal, but the manual and visual (including the 
purely retinal and the oculo-motor) [are] used in 
conjunctions of all possible varieties that the occa- 
sion [demands]. From the very start phonics [re- 
ceive] due emphasis in clear articulation and enun- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 33 

ciation, so that correct sound values [may] be se- 
cured from all. Then there [is] gradual addition 
of phonetics in which the phonic values [are] attached 
to the visible phonetic symbol. Oculo-motor and 
manual-motor exercises [help] to clinch. . . . When 
I wrote to you I did not think it necessary to establish 
my entire doctrine, and may have dwelt unduly on 
this phase of finally establishing in the pupil's pro- 
gressive efforts, not a short-circuit, — this figure is 
misleading, — but an automatic subconscious slide 
from visible symbol to thought, so swift that only 
the starting-point and the goal would be high in 
clear consciousness." 

(2) Increased Rapidity. — Many investigations 
have been made that tend to prove that individuals 
who rely upon the eye chiefly in reading forge ahead 
more rapidly than those who depend largely upon 
the ear and lips for their cue in making out meaning.^ 
At the same time, it is claimed that rapid readers 
retain more than slow readers. The slow reader 
can reproduce less by sight than by sound; while 
the very rapid reader can recall more of the visual 
than of the auditory. This means that eye-minded- 

* O'Shea, Linguistic Development and Education, The Macmillan Co., 
1907, p. 226. 

D 



34 



THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 



ness is an important factor in determining reading 
rates. In other words, rapid readers are generally 
of the visual t)Ape. Other ways of stating the com- 
parison are the following: "The ten slowest readers 
show almost double the amount of lip-movement 
that the ten most rapid do"; or, the "ten most 
decided lip-movers read 4.1 words per second; 
while the ten who show least movement of lips read 
5.6 words per second." ^ From these facts O'Shea 
infers that "the greater the number of modalities 
that are involved in reacting upon any word, the 
greater is the tendency of the word-idea alone to 
absorb the attention, and so defeat the end of reading. 
Therefore, we should employ methods that will 
reduce the auditory and vocal processes to a minimum 
or eliminate them altogether if possible." 

I believe a fallacy lurks in these inferences. In 
the first place, the fact that a reader does not appar- 
ently move his lips is no proof that he is inhibiting 
motor images in his thinking; for one may inhibit 
the actual movement, but not the tendency to move, 
nor the motor image. This has been proved by 
conclusive laboratory experiments witnessed by 
myself. Furthermore, the implication that rapid 

^ O'Shea, op. ciL, p. 227. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 35 

readers remember more of what they read because 
they suppress the motor idea is contradicted by 
numerous experiments on memory, which show in 
every instance that recollection is better when the 
motor image is added to visual and auditory images 
than when the muscular idea is suppressed. 

The facts in regard to lip-readers simply amount 
to this : that visual-minded people apperceive visual 
language more rapidly than the motor-minded.^ 
Common sense would lead one to expect this very 
thing. It means that people who depend chiefly on 
the sense of sight for information and memory see 
more rapidly than those who depend upon some 

1 "My own experiments show similar results. The visual readers not 
only read more rapidly than those who have an 'inner speech,' but repro- 
duce more of what has been read (judged by an immediate test: I do 
not know what a delayed test would show). Not to have the habit of 
subarticulation does not seem, in an adult, to impair imderstanding or 
retention. In learning to read it seems to me both inevitable as an ac- 
companiment and indispensable as a means. If, therefore, the distinc- 
tion of visual and motor types in readers is an ultimate (or congenital) 
mental difference between individuals, we can say that the visual-minded 
deal more easily and successfully with visual material, but if these be, in 
any degree, acquired characteristics, then we should have a right to say : 
In so far as the direct visual habit can be cultivated, it is of advantage to 
develop it. I have found that the visual readers report the general 
amoimt of their reading to be greater than that reported by readers of 
the other type, which suggests a relation between practice and the rise 
of this form of association. " — Professor Robert MacDougall, New 
York University, in a personal note to the author, commenting on the 
above paragraph. 



36 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACfflNG READING 

other sense. It is my opinion that children are all 
motor-minded; that the muscular image, as some 
one has said, is the greatest psychological discovery 
of modern times. The importance of the motor 
idea in the mental life of the child is shown in his 
passion for movement, his interest in the action and 
function of things, his instinct of making and han- 
dling objects, his manner of learning oral speech, and 
in reading and in stud3dng. The actual movement 
of the lips in reading will tend naturally to diminish 
as the pupil gains skUl in speech. But the motor 
images remain as a vital element of the total associa- 
tion of the word. If this were not the case, it would 
be impossible to utter words at will, since there must 
be a pattern of movement in the mind before any 
voluntary action can take place at all. One other 
consideration must be borne in mind in this connec- 
tion; namely, that in learning to read the child is 
not merely getting thought from visual language, 
but is fashioning a tool for future use. The word 
is a medium through which one sees the thoughts 
of others; but it is also an implement for the ex- 
pression of one's own thoughts. It is not a com- 
plete word until it has gone through the motor stage. 
Intelligent educators recognize this when they in- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING 37 

sist that we shall not teach the spelling of words 
that children cannot use. Now, use always means 
a motor function. Furthermore, the use of common 
words must be automatic in order to be effective. 
Hence the expressive phase of words cannot be elim- 
inated even if it were desirable to do so. In the 
early reading lessons the most difficult problem is 
to get the child to remember his sight words and 
phonetic elements; and the motor element of this 
learning process is the most important of all the 
clews of memory. 



CHAPTER II 
THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 

In order to make his method scientific, the teacher 
studies not only the laws of mental development and 
action, but tries to discover also how activities of 
the mind are related to the nervous and muscular 
functions of the body. Our next inquiry, therefore, 
is: What are the physiological factors in the process 
of reading ? 

I. The Physical Basis of Association. — In physio- 
logical terms we may say that if two or more groups 
of brain cells are stimulated simultaneously or by 
like objects, a subsequent stimulation of one of them 
tends to produce action in the remaining ones. The 
cells in each region of the brain and of the different 
regions are connected by means of fibres; and all 
experiments point to the conclusion that these con- 
necting fibres are involved in association. Dr. Vulpius 
says connecting fibres begin to grow in the outer 
and inner layer of the cortex about the fifth month 
of the infant's life, and cease to grow at the age of 
seventeen. The motor, sight, and hearing regions 

38 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 39 

reach the maximum number of fibres during the 
second year. The speech centre keeps on increas- 
ing its fibres in number rapidly until the eleventh 
year, and more slowly until the thirty-ninth year.^ 
The inferences from these facts seem to be that 
the necessities of the infant's life call first for the 
motor development; and, as movements are asso- 
ciated with visual and auditory impressions, these 
centres function at the same time. The motor ap- 
paratus is perfected rapidly after the fifth month, 
so that at about the age of one year children usually 
begin to walk ; and by the end of the second year 
the growth of motor fibres culminates, which im- 
plies that henceforth nature demands a tremendous 
amount of motor activity. The rapid development 
of the speech centre culminates at eleven, which 
seems to mean that the most favorable period for 
language teaching is at that age and immediately 
afterward. This corresponds roughly with the period 
when the child in most European countries goes to 
the secondary school and begins the study of a for- 
eign language. In our country the study of foreign 
language is postponed until the age of foxirteen. 
European practice is in closer harmony with physi- 

* Frederic Burk, Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 6, p. 5. 



40 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

ological demands than our own procedure. There 
is an agitation now going on which seeks to end the 
elementary period with the sixth school year. This 
would involve a complete reconstruction of our edu- 
cational system, but as the proposal is supported 
by the experience of foreign nations as well as by 
the teachings of brain physiology, we may in time 
yield to the argument. 

2. Localization of Brain Function. — We have as 
yet an imperfect knowledge of the localization of 
brain function. From what we do know the prob- 
ability is strong that every mental activity involves 
a corresponding physical activity. We know, for 
instance, that the motor area is located on each side 
of the Fissure of Rolando. The region above the 
Fissure of Sylvius is the speech centre. Hearing is 
located in the temporal region. Sight is in the occip- 
ital lobe. These facts have been verified by several 
methods, the most convincing of which is that when 
a given region of the brain is damaged the corre- 
sponding mental function disappears. 

(i) Aphasias. — The dependence of words upon 
brain substance is clearly shown in the following 
experience of Dr. William H. Thomson,^ of New 

^ Brain and Personality, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1897, p. 88. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 41 

York: "I was once hurriedly sent Jor by an old 
patient of mine. I found her much disturbed by a 
strange experience which she immediately detailed 
in the well-chosen words of an educated woman: 
'What is the reason, doctor,' she said, 'that every- 
thing in a book or newspaper is illegible to me? 
Last evening I sent an advertisement to the Herald 
for a waitress, and when the girls came this morning 
I could not read their references. I then took up 
the Herald and found that I could not read a word 
in it. At first I supposed my eyesight had failed, 
but I could see everything around the room as well 
as ever, and so also with my crochet work. I then 
opened the Bible, but could not read a word. What 
is the matter with me ? ' I at once recognized that 
she had been struck with word-blindness. . . . Hav- 
ing calmed her excitement as best I could, I was able 
to note that she had absolutely no other disorder of 
speech and none of vision. She heard every word 
that came to her ears, and she could speak as flu- 
ently as ever, but no word could reach her conscious- 
ness through her eyes. All that as yet had hap- 
pened to her was that a little artery which supplies 
blood to a small area in the visual region of her 
brain had become plugged, with the result of totally 



42 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

disorganizing the gray matter where eye words are 
registered. The brain gray matter . . . immedi- 
ately dies if deprived of its supply of blood." 

The defect described here is called by scientific 
men alexia, and consists in a loss of power to read. 
The printed characters are seen, but they convey no 
meaning. The individual thus affected may be 
able to write, but is unable to read what he has just 
written. Words as visual symbols are blotted out. 

Another form of aphasia is known as word-deaf- 
ness. A man thus stricken may at first be supposed 
to have become insane, because he talks nothing 
but gibberish and cannot understand anything that 
is said to him. It may, however, turn out that he 
can read and write as well as ever, and to all ques- 
tions put to him in writing he may write correct and 
intelligent answers. He can hear and understand 
the ticking of a watch and the notes of a canary 
and all other sounds except those of spoken words. 
This disease is caused by injury to a small area of 
the brain which is described as a part of the left 
superior temporal convolution. (See "Wernicke," 

Fig. 5.) 

The aphasias thus far illustrated are of the sensory 
type. Motor aphasia is known under the general 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 43 

name of apraxia and is defined as "a loss of ability 
to perform learned or skilled acts, in the absence of 
paralysis, or ataxia, or pronounced sensory or per- 
ceptional defect." ^ A man retires at night in good 
health, and finds himself unable the next morning 

Central fissure 



Middle 

frontal gyre- 
Preceniral gyre 




Fissure of Sylvitis 



Fig. 5. 

Reproduced, with permission, from Ladd and Woodworth's Elements of 
Physiological Psychology. 

to speak a word. He is not suffering from word- 
deafness, for he understands everything that is 
spoken to him. Nor is he affected with word- 
blindness, because he can read. In his distress he 
indicates by gestures that he would like to write ; but 

^ Elements of Physiological Psychology, Ladd and Wood worth, Scrib- 
ner's Sons, 191 1, p. 254. 



44 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

though he can hold his pen and move it on the paper, 
he can find no words to express himself by writing, 
any more than he can by speaking. Words as motor 
images have disappeared from his mind. This 
affiiction is usually caused by an injury to Broca's 
Convolution. (See Fig. 5.) ' 

3. The Physical Basis of a Word. — Animals have 
cries, calls, grunts, squeals, screams, and whatever 
other sounds there may be, but no words. Their 
language corresponds with that of the infant's first 
stage, when his only utterance is a cry./ The cries 
in each instance are purely instinctive. ,jf The princi- 
pal truth about a word is that it is the result of a 
voluntary act of the mind. Apart from a thinking 
mind it has no existence. Every word was originally 
made by a personality which designed it. The 
word is an instrument which the thinker invents for 
himself for the purpose of defining his thoughts. 
Feelings may be expressed by a cry or other sound. 
They do not need words to become true feelings. 
In fact, language usually fails when we try to ex- 
press our feelings. But thoughts need words to be- 
come true thoughts. Hence speech is the basis of 
man's superiority over the brute creation. 

The complexity of the cerebral elements concerned 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 45 

in the knowledge and use of words is shown by the 
manifold sensory and motor experience that verbal 
expression involves. Words are, in the first place, 
objects of sense-perception. The spoken word is 
recorded on the auditory region of the cortex. The 
written or printed word leaves its trace on the visual 
centre. The point-word of the blind produces an 
impression through the tactile sense. 

There is, in the second place, a large variety of 
motor forms of reaction. When one looks at a word 
the ciliary muscle is exercised, and the motores oculi 
perform their share of the labor of accommodation. 
When one observes the writing of a word, an addi- 
tional motor experience is furnished by the eye as it 
follows the movement of the point of the writing 
instrument. If one writes himself, the eye follows 
the hand, while the muscles of hand, fingers, wrist, 
forearm, and whole arm make their record of move- 
ment and resistance. The spoken word exercises 
the vocal cords, tongue, lips, larynx, and diaphragm. 
Assuming that each of these motor processes in- 
volves a separate brain area, it is thus evident that 
the mere form of the word is functionally related 
to a vast number of cerebral elements. 

Alexander Bain was one of the first of modern 



46 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

psychologists to discover the significance of the 
motor idea in the mental life. "Thinking," he says, 
"is restrained speaking or acting." ^ "A child can- 
not describe anything that he was engaged in, with- 
out acting it out to the full length that the circum- 
stances will permit. . . . No better example could 
be furnished than the vocal recollections. When we 
recall the impression of a word or a sentence, if we 
do not speak it out, we feel the twitter of the organs 
just about to come to that point. The articulating 
parts — the larynx, the tongue, the lips — are aU 
sensibly excited. . . . Some persons of weak or 
incontinent nerves can hardly think without mutter- 
ing — they talk to themselves." ^ 

Commenting on this passage. Stout says that Dr. 
Bain "rather understates his case; this habit is 
by no means confined to persons of weak or incon- 
tinent nerves. It is often found in those who become 
intensely absorbed in their own trains of thought to 
the disregard of their social surroundings. . . . Ide- 
ational process is correlated with brain process. 
The brain is so intimately one with the rest of the 
organism that processes in it cannot take place 
without in some measure overflowing to other parts 

^ The Senses and the Intellect, 4th ed., p. 358. ^ Op. cit.,'p. 357. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 47 

of the body. . . . Where ideational activity is just 
struggUng into independent existence, so that it may 
be regarded as little more than an extension or supple- 
ment of perceptual activity, ideas can scarcely fail 
to pass into overt movements." ^ 

(i) How a Word gets Recorded on the Brain. — 
Three speech areas have been determined on the cor- 
tex of the brain, — the auditory, the visual, and the 
motor. These are normally connected by fibres, 
so that stimulation of one afifects each of the others. 
The sound of a word suggests its written or printed 
form; the sight of a word calls up its sound; and 
both the sight and the sound will tend to inaugurate 
expression. A stimulus acting upon the sense-organ 
is transmitted to the brain, where it affects certain 
nerve-cells. If this stimulus is repeated, the im- 
pression is deepened. The constant and prolonged 
repetition of a stimulus will thus effect a permanent 
anatomical change in the brain stuff. This change 
no microscope can detect ; but that it exists, no 
intelligent man can doubt. The words that one 
hears produce permanent changes in the auditory 
region. The words that are seen are recorded in the 

^Manual of Psychology, G. F. Stout, Hinds & Noble, N.Y., 1899, 
pp. 468-469. 



48 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

visual area. Motor images of expression, whether 
oral or written, are supposed by some to be the exclu- 
sive function of Broca's Convolution. 

In 1861 Broca first announced his important dis- 
covery that a certain gyrus above the Fissure of 
Sylvius on the left hemisphere is especially concerned 
in exercising the power of speech. He explained the 
fact that aphasias usually follow injury to the left 
half of the brain by relating speech to gesture, one 
of the early and instinctive modes of expression. As 
most men are right-handed, they are left-brained 
in language. Broca, however, spoke of a "faculty" 
of language and believed that its physical basis is 
in what we now know as Broca's Convolution. 
There is no faculty of language as such, whose seat 
is confined to any particular area of the brain. 
Speech involves all the faculties or functions of the 
mind, and is not confined to any one cerebral area. 
But there seems "to be good ground for still re- 
taining Broca's speech centre, while relieving it of 
part of its supposed duties." ^ 

Now these three speech centres — the visual, the 
auditory, and the motor — do not create words. 
They merely register words fashioned by the human 

^ Elements of Physiological Psychology, Ladd and Woodworth, p. 261. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 49 

spirit and keep them ready for use. Emperor 
Charles V is credited with the saying that a man is 
as many times a man as the number of languages 
he knows. In addition to the various forms of 
aphasias already referred to, there is one known 
under the name of asymholia} This has led to the 
inference that there are separate cerebral areas for 
each' language, as well as for figures, music, and ob- 
jects. Thus, it has been shown that injury to the 
brain may blot out all English words; but leave 
Latin, Greek, and French intact.^ Similarly, ' there 
are separate areas for recording music and figures ; 
for cases are cited of patients who "had lost the 
power of reading music, though they could still read 
words ; and Dr. Thomson treated a patient who had 
lost the power to read and write words, though he 
could both read and write figures, and continued 
active in business for several years after his misfor- 
tune had overtaken him. He never recovered the 
use 'of words, but retained his knowledge of figures 
to the end of life.^ Perhaps this physiological pecu- 

^Ladd and Woodworth, op. cit., p. 252. 

2 Professor Hinshelwood, of the University of Glasgow, in Lancet, 
Feb. 8, 1902. See also his book, Letter, Word, and Mind Blindness, 
London, 1901. 

^ Brain and Personality, W. H. Thomson, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1908, 
p. 102. 



50 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

liarity explains why a child learns two languages as 
easily as one, and uses the two without confusion. 

When a child learns to talk, he begins with bab- 
bling ; that is, he imitates all sorts of sounds that he 
hears, merely as sounds. He plays with his voice. 
This shows that the auditory region and Broca's 
Convolution are so intimately related, though so 
far apart in space, that every sound registered in the 
one gets itself automatically expressed through the 
other. In the next stage the child recognizes sounds 
as significant ; he apperceives them as words. Then 
he chatters. Words are now repeated as incessantly 
as empty sounds were before. This is practice, 
practice, practice, but all instinctive, all in the form 
of play. Thus unconsciously and without formal 
teaching oral speech is registered in the auditory 
area and in Broca's Convolution. 

We have already pointed out that reading and 
writing are not instinctive, but conventional. The 
child will not learn to read and write through mere 
playful imitation, as he learned to speak. A teacher 
becomes necessary; and he must supply artificially 
the conditions that nature provides in oral speech. 
These conditions are interest and practice, practice, 
practice. The connection between the auditory 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 51 

region and Broca's Convolution is fully established. 
The task now before us is to connect the third or 
visual area with the other two. Drill takes the 
place of play. The seen word must be associated 
with its sound, with its expression, and with its 
meaning. And there is no royal road to success. 
All we can hope to do is to appeal to interest and 
the play instinct and thus imitate as nearly as pos- 
sible the natural conditions found in the case of oral 
speech. 

4. Physical Basis of the Meaning of Words. — Sir 
William MacEwen, an eminent Professor of Surgery 
in the University of Glasgow, gives the following 
interesting particulars in the case of a mechanic who 
had received a severe injury to his head : ^ Imme- 
diately after the accident he was in a peculiar mental 
condition. Physically he could see, but what he 
saw conveyed no impression to his mind. Thus an 
object presented itself before him which he could not 
make out, but when this object emitted sounds of 
the human voice, he at once recognized it to be a 
man who was one of his fellow-workers. He was 
equally unable to recognize his wife and children. 

1 Address before the British Medical Association, etc., British Medical 
Journal, 1888, Vol. 2, p. 307. 



52 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

By eyesight he could not tell how many fingers he 
held up when he placed his own hand before his face 
till he became aware of the number by the sense of 
touch. These symptoms gave the clew to the hidden 
injury in his brain and told the surgeon where to 
trephine the skull. The operation showed that a 
portion of the inner table of the skull had been de- 
tached and become embedded in the gray matter of 
that locality. The bone was removed; and then 
the patient recovered and returned to work. 

From this and similar cases we learn that seeing 
and knowing what is seen are not the same thing, 
because each of these mental processes has a dis- 
tinct material basis in the brain. We have already 
cited a case of word-blindness, an affliction under 
which a patient sees words but does not know what 
they mean. The case of Professor MacEwen is 
called mind-blindness, although it is no more such 
than the other. The significant thing in both cases 
is the fact that there is one region of the brain which 
registers words, and another which registers their 
meanings. There is a separate area employed in 
seeing objects and still another area in making out 
what the objects are. We have already explained 
what is meant by sound-deafness. The patient 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 53 

hears perfectly the spoken words of others, but does 
not know what they mean. There is a place in the 
temporal lobe where sound stimuli in general are 
registered and an adjoining area where the meaning 
of sounds in general is recorded. Let this latter 
region be separately damaged, and the victim can- 
not tell the sound of a boiler factory from a church 
bell. All sounds are alike indistinguishable noises. 
From these illustrations it is certain that the know- 
ing areas are distinct from the sensory areas, but in 
close proximity. In other words, the "meaning" of 
a spoken or written word is registered on a distinct 
cortical area. We therefore have a fourth physiolog- 
ical factor to add to the three speech areas already 
described ; namely, the word-meaning centres. And 
as there is one area for the meanings of heard-words 
and another area for the meanings of seen-words, 
the total number of speech centres for words alone 
is five. If we recall that music and numbers and 
foreign languages occupy each a distinct place on 
the map of the cerebral hemispheres, we get some 
notion of the complexity of physiological func- 
tions involved in the speech of an educated human 
being. 

5. The Relation of Lefl-and-Right-Handedness to 



54 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Speech. — In the first chapter we called attention to 
the fact that when the child begins to employ ges- 
ture as a mode of expression he uses one hand more 
than the other, and thus determines (or shall we say 
indicates ?) whether he is to be right-handed or left- 
handed. We shall now see that right-handedness 
and left-handedness bear a most remarkable physi- 
ological relation to the development of oral and 
written speech. It is well known that the left brain 
governs the right side of the body, and the right brain 
governs the left side of the body. Injury to either 
hemisphere of the brain produces, therefore, paraly- 
sis on the opposite side of the body. It should also 
be recalled that most people are right-handed. 
With these facts in mind we proceed to quote the 
following statement, written by Professor Ladd of 
Yale in 1891 : "Aphasia is far more frequently due 
to changes in the left than in the right hemisphere 
of the brain. Dr. Seguin, out of 260 cases, calcu- 
lated the proportion of aphasias due to lesions on 
the left side, as compared with those due to lesions 
on the right, to be as 243 : 17 or 14.3 : i. . . . Such 
facts have led to the theory that, in all but left- 
handed men, speech, like other motor functions, is 
chiefly left-brained; remarkable cases of left-handed 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 55 

people who have become aphasic through lesions 
on the right hemisphere are actually recorded." ^ 

Twenty years later the same authority writes as 
follows : " Simple paralysis or loss of sensation re- 
sults from injury to either hemisphere. But object- 
blindness, word-blindness, or word-deafness, the 
various aphasias and apraxias, usually result from 
injury to the left hemisphere." ^ That is to say, 
ordinary movement and sensation are the function 
of both sides of the brain, but special skills and the 
record of education seem to be the function of one 
hemisphere only. The patient treated by Dr. 
Thomson suffered injury to Broca's Convolution of 
the left hemisphere ; but he had a perfectly sound 
right Broca which had no record of speech. Professor 
MacEwen's patient was a right-handed man, and 
the splinter was driven into a convolution of his left 
brain, or the speaking hemisphere. Now he had 
exactly the same collection of cells on his right hemi- 
sphere, all uninjured, yet these could not help him 
to recognize his own wife and children. It is evi- 
dent, therefore, that those cells on the right hemi- 

1 Elements of Physiological Psychology, George Trumbull Ladd, Scrib- 
ner's Sons, 1901, p. 295. 

2 Elements of Physiological Psychology, Ladd and Woodworth, Scrib- 
ner's Sons, 1911, p. 263. 



56 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

sphere could see because they belonged to the visual 
area, yet they did not know what they saw. Though 
belonging to an adult man, they had never been 
taught the meaning of visual objects, and did not 
know what they saw any more than an infant knows 
what it sees the first week of Ufe. 

All our education, therefore, is registered on one 
side of the brain only. If that side is injured, some 
mental functions disappear; if the uneducated side 
is damaged, intelligence remains intact, although 
paralysis may ensue. "It would seem, from the 
evidence obtained, that the left hemisphere so 
completely takes charge of acts of skill, and of in- 
tellectual processes concerned in them, as to leave 
nothing for the great bulk of the right hemisphere 
to do. Such a conclusion is, of course, in itself ex- 
tremely improbable, especially in view of the nearly 
equal size and inner development of the two hemi- 
spheres; but it must be admitted that the role of 
the right hemisphere, aside from the simplest sen- 
sory and motor functions, is not at all clearly made 
out." 1 

" A man who was one of the strongest thinkers and 

^Elements of Physiological Psychology, La,dd and Woodworth, 191 1, 
p. 264. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 57 

one of the greatest masters of English style that I 
have ever known," says Dr. Thomson/ "had his 
mind totally wrecked one morning by an apoplectic 
clot. But though he lived for months afterwards 
with his right brain hemisphere apparently as sound 
as ever, yet he could not recognize the dearly loved 
members of his family either by sight or by their 
voices. His intelligence was simply suddenly anni- 
hilated by the injury in his left hemisphere." The 
same writer cites the following remarkable case: 
A patient forty-seven years of age awoke one morn- 
ing with his whole left side numb and paralyzed. 
" He remained thus paralyzed ten years till he died, 
but meantime his speech was perfectly normal, his 
reading good, and his memory unaffected. He gave 
no sign of mental weakness, but was always intelli- 
gent, patient, cheerful, and particularly good in 
attention. He read papers constantly and liked 
to talk politics. He bore his disability bravely, and 
was neither depressed, emotional, irritable, nor 
apathetic. At the autopsy a large cyst fuU of fluid 
occupied the anterior part of the right hemisphere, 
with the whole tissue disorganized and without any 

^ Brain and Personality, W. H. Thomson, Dodd, Mead & Co., N.Y., 
1908, p. 237. 



58 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

remains of gray matter, while the posterior half of 
the hemisphere was everywhere atrophied." 

Now what determines which hemisphere shall be 
educated ? Most men are right-handed, hence apha- 
sias and apraxias occur generally from injury to the 
left brain. "This special culture of the left hemi- 
sphere — if we may so express the fact — may well 
enough be connected, both as cause and effect, with 
the prevalent right-handedness of the human spe- 
cies." Thus Ladd and Woodworth.^ Some, more 
bold, have ventured the statement that the hand 
that an infant uses predominantly for gesture 
determines not only whether he is to be right-handed 
or left-handed, but also whether his right or left 
hemisphere is to be educated. Apparently no area 
of the brain ever interchanges its capacity with any 
other. The auditory area cannot be taught to see, 
the visual area cannot be taught to hear, and neither 
of them can take the place of Broca's Convolution. 
Neither can the seeing area be taught to know what 
is seen or the hearing area to know the meaning of 
sounds. Recoveries in aphasia are explained on the 
theory that there has been no total destruction of 
tissue, or that the corresponding area in the opposite 

^ Op. cit., p. 264. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 59 

hemisphere has been educated to do the work of the 
injured one. In young persons, while the nervous 
system is still plastic, this is possible. But after the 
age of fifty it is usually impossible to induce the un- 
educated hemisphere to learn any new tricks. 

6. Muscular Movements involved in Reading. — 
Numerous attempts have been made to ascertain 
the exact behavior of the eyes when we read.^ By 
these studies the following facts have been estab- 
lished : — 

(i) By means of photographs and recording 
apparatus attached to the eyes, it can be proved 
that the eyes in reading do not travel at a uniform 
rate of speed across the page, but move along in 
steps. 

(2) These steps vary in size and number from 
line to line in the case of a single individual. In 
Fig. 6 we have the record of four successive read- 
ings of a line by the same subject.^ The short ver- 
tical Hues show where the pauses were made. The 
figures at the right indicate the number of pauses. 



* The most noteworthy of these studies are found in the following two 
volumes: (o) The Psychology of Reading, by Walter F. Dearborn, 
Science Press, N.Y., 1906 ; {b) The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, 
by Edmund B. Huey, The Macmillan Co., 1908. 

2 Dearborn, op. cit., p. 75. 



i 



60 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

The figures over the words indicate the duration of 
the pause in thousandths of a second. When the fixa- 
tion was unsteady, a bracket and curve show the be- 
ginning and ending of the oscillation. The shift is 
from bracket to curve. The second reading in the 

Successive Readings by the Same Subject OP a. Newspaper 
^ Column g 

I CHART I A I 

e 

z z 

5A dT. PEJTB|RSBURlG, Nov.] 2.(— Thie Ad[m)Iratty 6 

490 140 140 230 

13B ST. PE[TE)ESBURG, [N)av. 2vj— The Ad[in)iraJty 4 

200 160 160 840 

15A 1ST. PET)EIISBURG, Nov. 12.— )Tlie AXlm[ira)lty 4 

*> 440 S20 200 

15B ST. PETER|SBURG, Nov. 2.— Thej AdDi[lra)lty 3 

Fig. 6. 
From Dearborn's Psychology of Reading, by permission. 

case was made a month after the first; the others 
were made immediately after the second. 

(3) The steps vary in size and number in different 
individuals. In Fig. 7 we have the record of five 
subjects, whose steps vary in number from 3 to 7 
for the same line. 

(4) Children take more steps than adults and move 
more slowly. This characteristic is verified by com- 
mon observation. Beginners in reading assist the 
eye in its long journey across the page by the use 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 6i 

of the fingers, which mark the numerous stopping 
places. Thus, tests made by Dearborn ^ on three 
children aged 9, 10, and 11, respectively, show in 
the youngest subject about double the number of 

Readings bj JPive Subjects of the) Same Newspaper Passage 

I 
I CHART II I 

in SB 

St2 Iti IB2 SSI 

T ST. PB(TB]RSBUR|G, No[V.) 2.— Tli|e Ajimiralty 4 

490 140 140 350 

H ST. PBCTERSBURG, [N)ov. 2.-|-Th6 Ad[m)iralty 4 

416 806 186 1S6 840 

S [ST. ]PBTER|S(B]URG, Nov). 2.— (Thle Admiralty 4 

OTO •" ''»1116 646 

F ST. P|ETERSBUR[G, Nov). 2.— The Atdm)iralty 3 

811 148 140 171 8fil 163 273 

M (S[T. |PE]TBR|SBURtG, )No[v.) 2.— [Th)e Ad|miralty 7 

Fig. 7. 
From Dearborn's Psychology of Reading, by permission. 

pauses found in the case of ordinary adult reading. 
(See Fig. 8.) 

(5) All the seeing takes place during the pauses. 
While the eye is moving from one fixation to another, 
it cannot see. The exact length of each pause can 
be ascertained as well as the total time, and a cal- 
culation shows that the eye-movement between 
pauses is so rapid that a fusion of stimuli results and 
makes vision impossible. In reading, the eye takes 

^ op. cit., p. 97. 



62 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

a fixed position, then surveys the line for some dis- 
tance on each side of the fixated point, taking in at 
a glance all the letters within the range of clear vision, 
after which it passes on to a new point of observation. 
(6) It has been proved, further, that adults in 
reading do not attend to individual letters, but recog- 
nize them in groups. Thus, with a reaction machine 

CHART XVII B 
C. L. Third Grade. Age 11. First Beading 

SOT 493 530 487 286 1188 

t K[i)n[g Mi)das thought, a[n)d thought.] At lastj |h|e| 
, b c a • < h g I 

830 246 174 190 196 499 766 666 868 778 

Ioo|ked| at t|he str|ang|er| and sa[id), [")I wishl that[) 
f • 

784 179 146 186 167 879 420 4S4 426 319 370 883 

ev[e)r)ythin|g [that I |touc[h ma)y [tur)ii [to) go|ld[.") | | | 

• db c« I fhjgkJ 

Fig. 8. 
From Dearborn's Psychology of Reading, by permission. 

it is ascertained that a word of five letters is recog- 
nized in the same time that is required for the identi- 
fication of a single letter standing by itself. On 
page loo of Huey's Psychology of Reading are 
four columns of reading matter. The first column 
contains 25 letters; the second contains 25 words 
of 4 letters each; the third contains 25 words of 8 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 63 

letters each; and the last column contains 25 words of 
12 letters each. I tested a high school girl on the first 
three columns with the following resxilt : first column, 
7 seconds ; second column, 10 seconds ; third column, 
1 2 seconds. This means that it required only three- 
sevenths more time to read 100 letters in the form 
of words than was required to read 25 letters stand- 
ing alone. It required only one-fifth more time to 
read 200 letters in the form of words than was re- 
quired to read 100 letters in the form of words. The 
same experiment with a college freshman resulted 
as follows : letters, 1 1 seconds ; second column, 1 2 
seconds; third column, 16 seconds. In terms of 
percentage, the test with the girl means this: to 
read 25 single letters requires seven seconds; com- 
bine the letters into words of four letters each, and she 
can read four times as many letters in only 43 per cent 
more time ; combine the letters into words of eight 
letters each, and she can read eight times as many 
letters in only 71 per cent more time. The freshman's 
test shows that with about 10 per cent more time 
than it takes to read 25 single letters he can read 25 
words of four letters each, and with about 45 per cent 
more time he can read 25 words of eight letters each. 
The conclusion is inevitable that, in reading, words 



64 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

are recognized as wholes; or that the letters com- 
posmg words are recognized in groups. 

(7) Experiments on muscular memory^ have 
shown that motor images are an important part of 
our memory of words, and that there is so strong 
a tendency to muscular movement of articulation 
when we think of a word, that it is impossible en- 
tirely to inhibit the movement. These movements 
of articulation, Hke the movement of the eyes in 
reading, represent words as wholes. Indeed, as 
Judd says, the eye-movements across the page seem 
to undergo a further reduction by which a single 
unitary movement may correspond to a whole group 
of words, rather than to single words. Cattell found 
one reader who could read seven words at a single 
exposure, and several who could read four words. 

(8) The fact that the steps of the eye across the 
page are shorter in the case of children than of adults 
shows that the grouping of word elements into 
thought wholes is a matter of development. The 
strong tendency of children to read words as individ- 
uals rather than as elements of a larger thought 
group confirms the above conclusion. 

1 T. S. Smith, American Journal of Psychology, July, 1896 ; Charles 
H. Judd, Genetic Psychology for Teachers, D. Appleton & Co., 1903, p. 244. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 65 

(9) The eye has a tendency to form short-lived 
motor habits. For instance, a subject, in reading 
nine Hnes, read the first four with four fixation 
pauses for each, and the next five with three pauses for 
each. Rapid readers form these habits more easily 
than slow readers. There are relatively fewer pauses 
when the lines are short, of uniform length, and of 
equal indentation, than when the lines are long, of 
variable length, and irregularly indented. 

(10) Dearborn announces his conclusion that the 
"size of the type should not be so large in compari- 
son with the length of line that but few words can 
be put on a line." The effect of too large a type is 
to increase unnecessarily the number of movements 
and pauses. A line from 75 to 85 mm., or about 
a third longer than the ordinary line of the New 
York dailies, with type 1.15 mm. in height, com- 
bines many advantages. 

(11) The chief factor in determining the fixation 
pause seems to be the unit of apperception. This 
unit is small in the case of numerals, abbreviations, 
connective elements, and long in the case of nouns, 
adjectives, verbs, and familiar phrases. A new 
fixation is made for each unit of apperception. 

7. The Meaning of Words is Largely Motor. — 



66 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Miss Adelaide M. Abell, in Educational Review for 
October, 1894, reports the results of experiments in 
reading upon Wellesley College girls. The girls 
were told to read a short story at a given hour and to 
time themselves. A few hours later they were asked 
to reproduce the story as nearly verbatim as possible to 
test comprehension and memory. The result showed 
that the slowest reader required six times as much 
time as the fastest. It showed also that slow readers 
"gain by slowness" and that comprehension does not 
depend upon whether one reads slowly or rapidly. In 
spite of this conclusion, Miss Abell ventures what ap- 
pears to me the illogical opinion that lip-movement is 
a hindrance, and should be discouraged in children. 
Huey tested twenty graduate students in a uni- 
versity, all of whom were necessarily extensive 
readers. The range of rate was from 2.5 words per 
second to 9.8 words. "Lip-movement was usual 
with only two or three of the twenty readers, but 
one of the fastest readers tested was a lip-mover." ^ 
This shows that the prevalence of the motor process 
is not the sole cause of slow reading. Such ele- 
ments as general habits of visual perception, prac- 

^ The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, The Macmillan Co., igoS, 
P- 175- 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 67 

tice in reading from childhood, power of concentra- 
tion, and mental alertness are recognized by Huey 
as factors in the reading rate. Romanes ^ confirms 
the conclusion that rapidity of reading is not nec- 
essarily accompanied by brilliancy of intellect. 
"There is no relationship," he declares, "between 
rapidity of perception . . . and intellectual activity, 
for I have tried the experiment with several highly 
distinguished men in science and literature, whom 
I found to be slow readers." After a detailed ac- 
count of certain experiments on interpretation of 
what is read and the nature of meaning, Huey says : 
"We may safely conclude, then, that meanings in 
reading are mainly feeling-reactions and motor atti- 
tudes attaching most intimately to or fused with 
the inner utterance of the words and especially of 
the sentences that are read. And with the utter- 
ance in which the meanings mainly inhere, we must 
include the movements of emphasis, of inflection, 
of gesture, and of expression generally. . . . The 
feeling of these bodily postures, attitudes, gestures, 
etc., may well furnish the very body of much that 
we call meaning." ^ 

^ Mental Evolution in Animals, George J. Romanes, D. Appleton & 
Co., 1893, p. 136. ^ Op. cit., p. 167, 



68 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Here we are face to face with a new fact, which 
has evidently been overlooked by all those who have 
advised us to discourage lip-movement, and have 
even endeavored to eliminate altogether the vocal 
image of the word. Such a procedure they call short- 
circuiting the association between the visual word 
and its meaning. But now we are confronted by 
the remarkable statement from one of those who 
himself is opposed to lip-reading that meaning itself 
is motor. When, therefore, we eliminate the articu- 
lation of words, we destroy a part of their meaning ; 
and thus the teacher who undertakes to make the 
direct and simple association between the visual 
image of the word and its meaning, will find his task 
impossible. "There can be little doubt," says 
Huey,^ " that the main meaning comes to conscious- 
ness only with the beginning of the sentence-utter- 
ance, and the reader does not feel that he has the 
complete sense until he has spoken it." 

8. Posture of Pupil. — An important part in oral 
reading is the muscular control involved in the 
posture of the pupil. One difficulty of the reading 
teacher is that children are timid. They are afraid 
of their own voices. Their classmates, unable to 

I Op. ciL, p. 147. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF READING 69 

hear them, are liable to lose interest, and then the 
reading hour becomes flat and unprofitable. To 
avoid this serious result, the teacher should start by 
teaching the children how to stand. They may be 
called one by one to stand in front of the class, to 
plant themselves firmly upon two feet, with heels 
together, chest high, and body erect. Then they 
should be directed to look squarely into the eyes of 
the audience. After several attempts they can do 
this without flinching. In this way they secure 
courage and a sense of power and repose. Without 
the possession of this feeling of confidence, no pupil 
can read well. Sometimes a child may step to the 
front and read. If this consumes too much time, let 
the pupil face in the direction of the largest portion 
of the class. He must understand that oral read- 
ing is for the purpose of pleasing and instructing 
others; and therefore he must endeavor to speak 
with force sufficient to enable all to hear him. But 
he must on no account be permitted to go to the 
other extreme and yell. He must be taught by 
example that force is not identical with noise, 
and that there is a way of making one's self 
heard even with the use of ordinary conversational 
tones. 



CHAPTER III 

PRINCIPLES DEDUCED FROM THE PSY- 
CHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF 
READING 

I. From Psychology 

(i) Various stages may be distinguished in a child's 
acquisition of language. One of these is the "bab- 
bling" stage, when he uses his vocal organs as a play- 
thing. This instinct accounts for the universal popu- 
larity of Mother Goose rhymes among children. When 
the child repeats these rhymes, with or without mean- 
ing, he trains his powers of speech, even as he develops 
his muscular system by physical play. 

(2) Gesture, tone, and inflection play an impor- 
tant part as auxiliaries of speech, especially during 
the "chattering" stage. These same elements are 
essential later to the appreciation and proper ren- 
dering of reading matter. 

(3) The number of verbs used by a child is rela- 
tively much larger than in the case of an adult. 
The child imitates movements before sounds and ex- 

70 



PRINCIPLES DEDUCED 71 

presses many actions by gesture. These considera- 
tions exhort us to put the emphasis, in early reading 
matter, upon doing, action, movement; hence the 
popularity of fairy tales, myths, and fables, all of 
which have the narrative form.^ 

(4) The number of words in a child's vocabulary 
varies greatly in different individuals, but is larger 
than is commonly supposed. A child of two may 
know ten or fifteen hundred words. In the first 
year of school, children may learn to recognize as 
many as two thousand printed words.^ 

(5) There is a vast difference between oral lan- 
guage and visual language. The former is instinctive, 
and self-acquired; the latter is artificial, and re- 
quires a teacher. About the only instincts the 
reading teacher can appeal to are the play instinct 
and the social desire for approbation. Reading is 
essentially a form of association; hence the follow- 
ing laws of association must be employed in our 
teaching of reading : — 

(6) Frequency. — The recall of an impression de- 
pends upon the number of times a connection has 
been made between the terms that are associated. 



^ See The Action Primer by Thomas O. Baker, American Book Co. 
2 See chapter on " A Quantitative Study of Reading." 



72 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Hence the necessity for constant review and drill 
in the mechanics of reading. 

(7) Vividness. — The intensity of the first impres- 
sion is an important factor in subsequent recall. In 
teaching reading, much of the success depends upon 
the skill of the first presentation. The vividness 
of the impression depends upon the nature of the 
stimulus, — the clear and forceful appeal, — the in- 
terest in the subject, and the emotion accompanying 
the impression. 

(8) Congruity. — Congruity of the emotional tone 
of an impression and the mood we are in controls 
the course of associations. This principle exhorts 
the reading teacher to create a suitable atmosphere 
before undertaking to present a piece of literature. 

(9) Interest. — That in which we are most inter- 
ested makes the deepest and most abiding impres- 
sion. Therefore the reading teacher, by skill of 
method and fitness of subject-matter, must appeal 
to the interest of the child. 

(10) Voluntary Association. — Not all association 
is controlled by the mechanical principles already 
enumerated. The highest type is voluntary. This 
means that by an effort of the will we can determine 
our mental movements. When so controlled, the 



PRINCIPLES DEDUCED 73 

process is called thinking or studying. One of the 
highest functions of teaching is to keep the children 
in control of their associations. 

(11) Silent reading alone is not sufficient. The 
muscular image of expression is an important part 
of meaning, and is an essential element in the pro- 
cess of learning. 

2. From Physiology 

(12) The motor, sight, and hearing areas of the 
cortex reach the maximum of fibres during the second 
year. The speech centre keeps on increasing its fibres 
rapidly until the eleventh year, and more slowly until 
the thirty-ninth year. From these facts we infer 
that in teaching a child to read we should employ as 
far as possible his motor activities. We infer also 
that the age of twelve is a more favorable time to 
begin the study of foreign languages than fourteen. 

(13) The principal truth about a word is that it 
is the result of a voluntary act of the mind. Apart 
from the thinking mind it has no existence. Broca's 
Convolution seems to be essential to the expression 
of words. When this is destroyed, vocal or written 
utterance is impossible. These facts emphasize the 
necessity of keeping children in the voluntary control 



74 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

of their associations when we are teaching them to 
read. (See Principle lo.) 

(14) A child learns to speak by instinct and with- 
out formal teaching. Reading and writing are not 
instinctive; practice and drill must supply arti- 
ficially the conditions that nature provides in oral 
speech. (See Principle 6.) 

(15) The "meaning" of a spoken or written word 
is registered on a distinct cortical area. Oral speech 
makes a connection between the heard word, the 
spoken word, and the meaning. Teaching a child 
to read is to add the seen word to this complex of 
associations. 

(16) Only one-half of the brain is educated in 
speech. Which half shall be thus trained is deter- 
mined or indicated by left-and-right-handedness. 
The hand that the child uses most for every pur- 
pose, including gesture, indicates whether he will edu- 
cate his left brain or his right brain. Right-handed 
people educate the left hemisphere ; left-handed people 
educate the right hemisphere. Thus we see the vast 
importance of gesture as a principal mode of speech 
before the acquisition of words. (See Principle 2.) 

(17) The eye in reading moves along the line in 
steps, the steps varying in size and duration accord- 



PRINCIPLES DEDUCED 75 

ing to circumstances. These considerations are 
important as bearing on the length of line and size 
of type in reading books for beginners. 

(18) Adults in reading do not attend to individual 
letters, but recognize them in groups. This impor- 
tant fact suggests the propriety of teaching to be- 
ginners sight words as wholes, and condemns the 
alphabetic method of teaching reading. 

(19) The muscular movements of articulation, 
like the movement of the eyes in reading, represent 
words as wholes. This fact is further confirmation 
of Principle 18. 

(20) The steps of the eye across the page are 
shorter in the case of children than of adults. This 
shows that the grouping of word-elements into 
thought-wholes is a matter of development. Con- 
stant effort must therefore be made by the reading 
teacher of the lowest grades to get the children to 
read thought-groups rather than word-units. 

(21) The eye has a tendency to form short-lived 
motor habits. There are fewer pauses if the lines 
are short, of uniform length, and of equal inden- 
tation. 

(22) Experiments have shown that the meanings 
in reading "are mainly feeling-reactions and motor 



76 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

attitudes " ; that the utterance in which the meanings 
mainly inhere consists of emphasis, inflection, ges- 
ture, and expression generally. All this points to 
the importance of oral reading. (See Principle 2 
and Principle 11.) 



CHAPTER IV 
THE ENDS OF READING 

1. Twofold Aspect of Reading. — In our considera- 
tion of primary reading, we must at the outset keep 
in mind two distinct phases of the subject ; namely, 
the mechanics of reading, and reading as Hterature. 
These two problems are different in kind, yet are 
intimately related; for learning to read is more or 
less of a drudgery, since it involves endless repeti- 
tion and drill and downright hard work, while read- 
ing as literature is mainly the pursuit of pleasure. 
Reading will refuse to yield its pleasures until the 
mechanical difficulties are mastered. But within 
recent years we have discovered that by emplo3dng 
suitable literary material in the beginning, we can 
facilitate the learning of the pupil and relieve the 
tedium of mechanical driU. 

2. Primary: The Mechanics. — (i) Instant Recog- 
nition of Speaking Vocabulary. — The object of read- 
ing in the first years of school is to train pupils to 
recognize, pronounce, and interpret, with facility 

77 



78 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

and accuracy, the words of the printed or written 
page. The words employed during the first two or 
three years are taken largely from the child's oral 
vocabulary. Therefore he is to be occupied in 
recognizing familiar words in their new disguise. 

Reading is to be looked upon not as an end in itself, 
but as a means of acquiring knowledge and pleasure 
from books. A pupil may have a certain mechani- 
cal fluency in reading without knowing much of 
what he reads; but he cannot successfully study 
any other subject unless he can read understandingly. 
A good reader can get, easily and rapidly, the con- 
tents of a book ; but to make one's self master of a 
printed book is what we call studying. Therefore, 
no matter what the subject of study is, if the lesson 
consist in mastering a book, the poor reader is al- 
ways at a disadvantage. Twenty teachers were 
asked each to write the names of ten boys who had 
the poorest records in lessons, and to indicate the 
character of their reading. Of the two hundred 
poor scholars thus selected, 63 per cent were put down 
as poor readers and only 27 per cent as good readers. 
This is an illustration of the important relation the 
art of reading bears to other school work. 

(2) Analysis of Words into Phonic Elements. — 



THE ENDS OF READING 79 

Another object of primary reading is to train pupils 
to pronounce words with accuracy, ease, and proper 
force. This necessitates attention to phonic drills. 
Words are to be arranged into short sentences from 
the first, and children are to be trained to read these 
naturally and fluently. The drills are to be first 
on reading entire sentences with expression and 
clearness; then on careful pronunciation of whole 
words; then of syllables; and finally of individual 
sounds. The individual sounds may then be put 
together again into syllables and words. When 
this stage of analysis and synthesis has been reached, 
it is time to teach the names of the characters which 
represent individual sounds. 

As to the order in which the elements of oral words 
and their corresponding written symbols should be 
taught, there is an almost infinite variety of opinion. 
Some would teach vowels first, some consonants. 
Some good authorities prefer to begin with the short 
vowels, because words containing long vowels usu- 
ally have silent letters, e.g. pat, pate ; hat, hate ; 
kit, kite; rat, rate; rod, rode; pet, Pete. But 
others offer good reasons for beginning with the 
three long vowels a, e, 0, and the six consonants/, /, 
m, n, r, s. Ward prefers these soxmds because they 



8o THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

may be indefinitely prolonged, and may be easily 
distinguished in any blending of two or more sounds. 
They thus lend themselves easily to phonetic read- 
ing. To me the order of teaching these elements 
does not seem to be a matter of great moment. But 
it is important that we recognize the necessity for 
the work, that we do it at the proper time, and do it 
with sufficient thoroughness. My experience with 
reading teachers has brought me to the conclusion 
that the sooner the child learns these phonetic ele- 
ments, the more rapid will be his progress in read- 
ing. For, as soon as he knows the sounds of letters 
and the value of diacritical marks, he is able to 
pronounce unfamiliar words without the aid of a 
teacher. 

At this point I venture a digression to consider 
the question whether the reading teacher should 
begin with script or print. Some begin with one, 
some with the other, and a few with both. The 
majority of successful first-year teachers known to 
me prefer to start with script. They claim that it 
is easier to pass from script to print than from print 
to script. It is usual to devote two or three months 
to script, then turn to print, so that by the middle 
of the first term or half-year, the child shall be able 



THE ENDS OF READING 8l 

to read out of a book, the preliminary work having 
been done on the blackboard or from charts. 

(3) Recognition, Representation, and Pronuncia- 
tion of Phonetic Elements. — When we reach the stage 
where words are analyzed into their individual 
sounds, it is necessary to begin the use of diacritical 
marks. If the language were phonetic and each 
sound were represented by a single character, such 
marks would be unnecessary. But in English we 
have some forty sounds and only twenty-six charac- 
ters to represent them. Our alphabet comes with 
some modifications from the ancient Phoenicians. 
The alphabet doubtless represented more or less 
accurately the oral and written elements of the an- 
cient language. But when we adopt this ancient. 
Oriental alphabet and try to fit it to our modern 
language with its new sounds, we find ourselves in 
difficulty. A so-called scientific alphabet has been 
prepared by the American Philological Association, 
which provides a separate character for each sound. 
This alphabet is used by the Standard Dictionary. 
But its adoption has not become sufficiently general 
to warrant its use in primary reading. There is 
therefore no option but to fall back upon diacritical 
marks. The extent to which these marks should 



82 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

be employed is a point upon which a wide diver- 
gence of opinion exists. Many, like Sarah Louise 
Arnold and Superintendent Brumbaugh, consider 
them a necessary evil, to be tolerated only when their 
presence is indispensable. Others, like Ward, have 
built up very elaborate systems of marks, which 
constitute essential features of their methods. 
There are some hundreds of thousands of words 
in the English dictionaries, but there are only 
forty sounds, as we have seen. While it is well 
to begin reading by teaching whole words, it is 
manifestly impossible to learn to recognize each 
word separately,' since there are so many that it 
would require all the school time to learn them in 
that way. An analysis shows that a comparatively 
small number of phonetic combinations enter into 
the composition of all words. These elements are 
known as phonograms, and, after they have been 
mastered, thousands of words not previously learned 
may be read by the pupil. It is undoubtedly true 
that children acquire unconsciously the laws of 
pronunciation; and the writer is of those who 
regard diacritical marks as, upon the whole, a 
nuisance. We do not believe it is necessary to de- 
face the text of a reading book by the use of any 



THE ENDS OF READING 83 

marks whatever. New words may be taught in 
columns at the beginning of a lesson, and in 
these the individual sounds may be marked. We 
are prepared to indorse the statement of Miss Arnold, 
that diacritical marks should be used only when 
they are necessary to pronounce words, and that 
when children can pronounce without their assist- 
ance, they should, by all means, be allowed to do so. 
Marks are but means to an end, and if the end can 
be reached as successfully without them as with 
them, we must take counsel from common sense and 
omit. 

(4) Synthesis of Phonetic Elements into Words. — 
A variety of exercises may be employed in mastering 
the phonetic elements of our language. The be- 
ginning will be analytic. Sight words have been 
taught as wholes. These will be analyzed into their 
constituent sounds. The elementary sounds will 
then be separately pronounced and represented by 
the proper diacritical marks. Daily drills will be 
required to make this work thorough; for unless it 
is well done, the time spent on it is wasted. To 
vary the drill, elements may be combined again by 
the children into significant words. This is what 
Ward calls the "blend." Both the analytic and 



84 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

synthetic exercises should be a part of the daily drill. 
Familiarity with diacritical marks may be imparted 
by requiring pupils to mark known sounds in famil- 
iar words, and by marking unfamiliar words and 
requiring pupils to pronounce them. By the way 
of test, the teacher may secure pleasing variety by 
a sort of game in which pupils are required to pro- 
nounce known words in new ways in accordance 
with diacritical markings, e.g., Kat^; Kat^; Kat0; 
Kat^; Kate; Kate; Kate; Kate; I saw men men 
pet Pet. 

(5) Meaning of Unfamiliar Words. — Most of the 
words in the reading of the first year or two should, 
as stated above, be chiefly such as are already 
familiar to the child. But, as the primary school 
is understood to cover the first four years, there 
must necessarily be many new words in the reading 
lessons. It is of the utmost importance that the 
meaning of these be properly explained and illus- 
trated, so that they may be interpreted by the child's 
experience and imagination. This remark appHes 
with especial emphasis to information lessons, such 
as history, geography, nature, and even arithmetic. 
Children can get no knowledge from books whose 
words are enigmas; and frequently children fail in 



TfiGE ENDS OF READING 85 

number work because they have not been properly 
trained in arithmetical language. 

(6) Spelling. — Word analysis and synthesis nat- 
urally leads to spelling, which from this time for- 
ward must receive careful and persistent attention. 
During the first year, the spelling may be informal 
and incidental. The child during this period is not 
required to write much. But during the second 
year simple exercises in spelling may be given. The 
child has now learned to write his name, and is able 
to do a Httle useful work in cop3dng and dictation. 
For this work spelling is required. 

3. Primary : Reading as Literature. — It is manifest 
that the literary aspect of reading is a very different 
thing from the mechanical aspect. The one has to 
do with form, the other with content. The one is 
a tool; the other is the very substance of culture 
and an end in itself. Literature is a form of beauty, 
like a Raphael Madonna, and "beauty is its own 
excuse for being." 

(i) What to Read. — Dr. Hall in the following 
paragraph does not overstate the importance of the 
subject-matter of our reading in the schools : — 

"Among the most serious of the pedagogic prob- 
lems of the present are, therefore, I believe, first, the 



86 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

selection in the focus of the best inteUigence, of the 
best reading material for children and youth; sec- 
ondly, the experimental gradations and often trans- 
forming adaptation of it, each to fit age and grade ; 
and thirdly, the elaboration of the most effective 
ways of teaching it with all energy and force." ^ 

It would be quite impossible, even if it were de- 
sirable, to undertake here to lay down a specific 
course of reading appropriate for the different grades 
and ages of school children. The material is so 
abundant and men's tastes, culture, and habits of 
thought differ so widely, that no list of books which 
any human being, however gifted, could select, 
would meet the approval of a majority of educators. 
What one can do, however, is to indicate the princi- 
ples which should guide us in our selections. All 
will admit that the mere caprice of the schoolmaster 
is not a sound basis of choice, nor is the opinion of 
any adult to be relied upon, however excellent it 
may be as to the literary quality of books in pre- 
scribing the reading matter for children. If inter- 
est is any criterion of the success of educational work, 
the children themselves must be consulted in the 
choice of reading. Of course, children's tastes are 

1 How to Teach Reading, G. Stanley Hall, Heath & Co., 1886, p. 34. 



THE ENDS OF READING 87 

not the only basis of choice, for, undirected, these are 
satisfied with trashy and harmful books quite as 
readily as with good ones. The adult may be al- 
lowed to decide what kind of reading is required to 
fit the child for "complete Hving" and may also be 
the final authority on the literary quality of the 
books; but among the materials thus accepted for 
school use by the adult judgment, the child should 
be allowed free choice, governed only by his own 
taste and his own sense of need and fitness. 

(a) Interest. — A number of investigations have 
been made in recent years that throw much light 
on this reading problem ; the results, though meagre 
and inconclusive, indicate the direction in which our 
efforts must tend if we are to substitute a scien- 
tific basis of choice for a dogmatic one. A study of 
children's stories by Clara Vostrovsky,^ shows that 
there is a vast difference between a child's way of 
saying a thing and an adult's way, even' when the 
latter is writing for children. After quoting a story 
as written /of a child, and the same as told by a child. 
Miss Vostrovsky says: "In comparing the two, the 
difference between them is at once apparent. In 
the child's story no sentiment is expressed ; nor are 

^ Studies in Education, Stanford University, 1896-1897, p. 15. 



88 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

his own feelings referred to in any way. There is 
httle of the aesthetic, no description of dress or per- 
sons ; and not general, but quite definite, names are 
used by him. On the whole, the child gives facts, 
and lets life itself speak for him." The various ele- 
ments of children's stories predominate in the follow- 
ing order: action, names, speech, appearance, place, 
time, possession, feeling, dress, cesthetic details, senti- 
ment, moral qualities. The last five combined con- 
stitute a mere trifle as compared with the element 
called "action." The inference drawn from these 
facts is that "stories for children should be true 
stories of child life, dealing with the holidays, etc., 
. . . and should be mainly confined to action, with 
little description of persons or feelings." 

It is proper to add that the age of the children 
in this experiment was from six to eight. In a study 
of children's reading tastes, made by the same 
author,^ the conclusion is reached that there exists 
the most marked difference between the sexes. 
"Girls prefer domestic stories, especially stories 
about children like themselves, while boys care more 
for books of adventure. . . . No boy confesses 
to a purely girl's story, while girls frankly do to an 

^ The Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 6, p. 523. 



\ 

\ THE ENDS OF READING 89 

iiiterest in stories about boys. Women writers seem 
to appeal more to giris, men writers to boys." 

]\ir. Clark Wissler, director of the psychological 
laboratory in the Ohio State University, has made 
an interesting inquiry into the interests of pupils 
in the reading of the elementary schools.^ Children 
were asked to write the subjects of all the reading 
lessons of the preceding year that they could remem- 
ber; to state which of these lessons they liked the 
best, and why ; and to name the book they would 
buy if they could have only one. Papers were col- 
lected from 1950 children, — 1060 girls and 890 
boys. 

As to the kind of lessons remembered, the returns 
show that the first is always remembered; nearly 
all the lessons remembered are in terms of experi- 
ence the child can realize in himself ; the lessons re- 
membered most are especially natural or lifelike. 
The lessons that are remembered by none of the 
children are the merely instructive lesson, the moral 
lesson, and abstract poems concerning duty, happi- 
ness, and the like. 

The returns on the third question confirm sex 

^ " The Interests of Children in the Reading of the Elementary Schools," 
The Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 5, p. 523. 



90 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

difference indicated by Miss Vostrovsky. Mr. 
Wissler says: "Among the works of fiction chosen 
by girls are many books that portray the home-life. 
. . . Many boys prefer fiction reciting the exploits 
of the adventurer in the garb of the scout, the ex- 
plorer, the soldier, etc." Among the additional 
conclusions of the study are these : — 

The literature most appreciated presents the true, 
the beautiful, and the heroic and the good in a con- 
crete way. 

The complete narrative makes a lasting impres- 
sion, while the story in outline is treated as unin- 
teresting. 

A further study on this subject made by Professor 
E. A. Kirkpatrick confirms some of the preceding 
conclusions and brings out a number of new points. 
For instance, the sexual differences already noted 
are strongly emphasized by Professor Kirkpatrick. 
"As to the kind of reading," he says, "the sexual 
differences are most marked, and the degree of dif- 
ference in all grades is surprisingly large. . . . Boys 
read about twice as much history and travel as girls 
and only about two-thirds as much poetry and 
stories. . . . Teachers are almost unanimous in 
saying that boys care more for history and stories 



THE ENDS OF READING 91 

of travel and adventure, while girls care more for 
stories of simple life. . . ." ^ 

The dozen most popular authors or books, accord- 
ing to these returns, stand in the following order: 
I. "Black Beauty"; 2. Louisa Alcott's "Little 
Men," "Little Women," etc.; 3. Stowe's "Uncle 
Tom's Cabin"; 4. "Robinson Crusoe"; 5. Long- 
fellow's poems; 6. Burnett's "Little Lord Faunt- 
leroy," "Editha's Burglar," "Sara Crewe"; 7. Dick- 
ens's "Old Curiosity Shop," "Oliver Twist," etc.; 
8. Andrews's "Seven Little Sisters," "Ten Boys," 
etc. ; 9. "Beautiful Joe"; 10. Scott's "Ivanhoe," 
"Lady of the Lake," etc.; 11. Wiggin's "Birds' 
Christmas Carol," etc. ; 12. Hughes's "Tom Brown." 

Among the general conclusions are the following : — 

"Objective incidents, actions, and specific terms 
are what the child notices, and these rather than 
general terms, subjective states, . . . are what 
impress children in a story." 

"Interest in fairy stories is at a maximum at about 
nine years of age, . . . while at about twelve inter- 
est in history begins to dominate, at first in the form 
of biography and pioneer history stories." 

1 " Children's Reading," by E. A. Kirkpatrick, The Northwestern 
Monthly, December, 1898, January and March, 1899. J. H. Miller, 
Lincoln, Neb. 



92 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

"There is nothing more certain than that boys of 
thirteen or fourteen are especially interested in ad- 
venture, . . . while quieter stories and sentimental 
stories are often preferred by girls of this age." 

Summarizing the conclusions of all these studies, 
we have the following criteria to govern teachers and 
principals in the choice of books and authors in the 
making and editing of school readers : — 

1. A child of from six to eight years of age appre- 
ciates no sentiment, does not care for subjective 
analysis or description, has little aesthetic taste, 
wants specific names (not general), and is satisfied 
with concrete facts which speak for themselves. 

2. The elements of a story which appeal to chil- 
dren of four, six, and eight years of age follow in 
importance this order: action, names, speech, appear- 
ance, place, time, possession, etc. 

3. There is an important sex difference in the 
reading taste. Girls prefer domestic stories written 
by women, while boys, especially at about thirteen 
or fourteen, love stories of adventure and heroism 
written by men. 

4. Only those reading lessons make a lasting im- 
pression upon the child which are in terms of his 
own experience. 



THE ENDS OF READING 93 

5. Children detest preaching or moralizing, pre- 
ferring to be taught indirectly by concrete stories. 

6. Children require complete narratives. Frag- 
mentary poems and stories in outline are treated as 
uninteresting. 

7. Children are fond of stories that treat of ani- 
mals, particularly those that represent animals as 
speaking and feeling like human beings. They are 
also deeply interested in stories about children. 

8. Young children care little for humor, but ap- 
preciate the pathetic. 

9. Interest in fairy tales culminates at nine. 

10. At twelve interest in history begins to domi- 
nate, biography and pioneer history bemg the forms 
at first preferred. 

11. Mere information has no attraction for the 
child. Reading must appeal to his feelings and 
imagination and possess human interest in order to 
make a deep and lasting impression upon him. 

(b) Other Qualities. — Such are a few of the quali- 
ties that seem to be demanded in our reading mate- 
rial in the light of our meagre knowledge of the child's 
nature and development. 

In addition to these psychological tests of reading 
matter there are a few pedagogical ones, based on 



94 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

common sense and practical experience in the class 
room; and these, it will be seen, in every instance 
confirm and supplement the criteria already enu- 
merated. 

Every teacher knows from experience that one 
requisite of a successful reading lesson is that the 
subject-matter shall come within the comprehension 
of the pupil. It must not be abstruse or abstract, 
nor must it deal with matters entirely outside the 
experience of childhood. This does not mean that 
children are wholly incapable of appreciating the 
merits of genuine literature. On the contrary, a 
child of seven can understand portions of the story 
of Hiawatha in the language of the poet ; in fact, I 
believe children greatly prefer the original poetic 
form. There is an indefinable charm in the poetic 
diction, the unique repetition of phrases, which at- 
tracts children of all ages. In order to come within 
the comprehension of our pupils, reading books 
need not necessarily be commonplace and matter- 
of-fact. The subject-matter should be of such a 
grade of difficulty that the pupil has some work to 
do, some effort to make, in order to appreciate it. 
Otherwise, there is no educative activity involved 
in his reading. As Mr. Chubb says, "The child will 



THE ENDS OF READING 95 

leap many a forbidding word-fence, if he is genuinely 
interested in the subject-matter." It would appear, 
therefore, that the so-called lessons of information 
on science, history, and geography, often found in 
grade readers, are out of place. This sort of informa- 
tion should be imparted through supplementary 
reading in connection with other subjects, and the 
reading period proper should be devoted to the study 
of real literature. Dr. Hall sums up this part of 
our subject in an admirable paragraph : — 

"It is assumed, then, that we must have stated 
or stataric readers, uniformly punctuated, contain- 
ing nothing merely petty or individual, and its read- 
ing must not be degraded as means to other ends, 
but must be of central importance, and the best test 
of the teacher and the school work. We must have 
regard chiefly, at first, in compiling readers and in 
using them in school, not to method, as we have 
been too wont to do, but to subject-matter, to con- 
tent, and its wide bearings. Nothing, again, brings 
out good reading like the comprehension of it, in- 
volving direct innervation from the higher cerebral 
centres. Yet we must here avoid selections the full 
meaning of which can be immediately comprehended 
and conveyed. The mind must grow slowly up to 



96 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

it by many repetitions; it must be felt and its drift 
vaguely caught before as a condition of the correct 
and healthy action of the intellect upon it." ^ 

The studies quoted above and others like them 
were undertaken to ascertain what is normally in- 
teresting to children at different ages. There are 
two or three possible attitudes to be taken with ref- 
erence to children. We may assume that their 
natural instincts and tendencies are upon the whole 
good and a safe guide for educational method and 
policy. Or we may assume, as the old theologic 
ideal did, that the child is all wrong and the aim of 
education is "to repair the ruins of our first parents 
by regaining to know God aright, and out of that 
knowledge to love, imitate, and be like him."^ Or 
we may borrow some philosophical or sociological 
ideal to which the child is to conform. But whether 
we take the one position or the other, a knowledge 
of what actually is the natural bent of the infant 
soul is necessary. 

In this matter of reading, shall we trust altogether 
the interests of the children, or shall we disregard 
altogether their desires and compel them to conform 

1 How to Teach Reading, G. Stanley Hall, D. C. Heath & Co., Bos- 
ton, 1886, p. 26. 

^ Milton, Tractate on Education. 



THE ENDS OF READING 97 

to what we think is best for them, or shall we take 
some middle ground? I have already indicated a 
possible mode of procedure by demanding that the 
adult's judgment shall prevail as to the literary qual- 
ity of books. After excluding all unworthy material, 
there is still enough left to satisfy almost any socio- 
logical or philosophical ideal ; and within the bounds 
thus set the child's liberty of choice should be re- 
spected. Otherwise we can have no guarantee that 
the pupil will have any genuine interest in his read- 
ing; and from the point of view of the teacher's 
experience, a reading lesson cannot be successful 
unless it is interesting. 

(c) Adaptations. — Many productions possess the 
qualities children demand, but are nevertheless upon 
the whole unsuitable for school use. These can 
often be made to fit school conditions by judicious 
" adaptation." Some literary gems are so perfect that 
it would be a sacrilege to touch them. These are 
not to be discussed but committed to memory. No 
one would wish to tamper with Gray's "Elegy" or 
Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade." But 
it might be quite possible to adapt one of Andersen's 
fairy tales or a Greek myth in such a way as to render 
it more acceptable to the heart of an American child. 



98 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

. One method of adapting such material consists 
in repeating stories to children and securing oral or 
written reproductions from them. By comparing 
these reproductions with the originals it is easy to 
ascertain which elements possess interest and which 
do not. Parts of the story that are omitted by all 
children evidently are not interesting; while those 
portions which are reproduced by all or most possess 
the greatest interest. In rewriting the story the 
interesting material only is employed, and in this 
way the material is "really and closely fitted to the 
minds and hearts of the children." ^ 

These remarks, however, must not be understood 
to apply to any stories that have reached a classic 
version. "The easy-word transliteralist has much 
to answer for in his alterations of classic story into 
one and two syllabled absurdities for the tender 
digestion of the child." ^ If a given piece of litera- 
ture is too difficult for a given grade, the remedy is 
not an easy paraphrase, but the postponement of 
the reading until a later grade. 

Finally, let me add that much of the staple literary 
diet of the primary grades should be poetry, because 

1 Hall, How to Teach Reading, p. 32 ; see Old Time Stories, by E. Louise 
Smythe, Werner & Co., Chicago, 1896. 

2 Chubb, The Teaching of English, The Macmillan Co., 1909, p. 86. 



THE ENDS OF READING 99 

in the literary evolution of mankind verse precedes 
prose, and the child's apprehension of the universe 
is essentially poetic. "When history and other in- 
formation studies have done their work on the in- 
formation side, poetry may do its on the imagina- 
tive and emotional side." ^ 

4. Grammar: The Mechanics of Reading. — In the 
lower grammar grades the phonetic drills should be 
continued, and in the higher should gradually lead 
to the rendering of certain typical forms of literature 
with artistic effect. The meaning and use and spell- 
ing of words is of course also continued. By this 
time, however, the purely colloquial vocabulary gives 
way to the diction found in works of standard authors, 
and henceforth we add to the objects of reading already 
enumerated an appreciative study of such works 
with a view of cultivating a taste for good literature. 
After the third school year, the pupil should have 
sufficient facility in reading to use it in acquiring 
knowledge. That is, reading ceases to be chiefly 
a tool-making operation and is gradually trans- 
formed into a tool-using process. Almost from the 
first day of school, drills in the recitation of good prose 
and poetry, with clearness, emphasis, dignity, and 
^ Chubb, op. cit., p. 83. 



100 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

impressiveness, should form a regular adjunct of the 
reading exercise. 

Another exercise that now becomes necessary is 
the study of the derivation of words and the mean- 
ing and use of affixes. These bear the same relation 
to the study of the meaning of words that phonetic 
drills bear to pronunciation. 

Gradually, as a means of emancipating himself 
from the supervision of the teacher, the pupil must 
learn the use of the dictionary. When he comes 
upon a new word he must learn to ascertain its 
meaning without assistance. The diacritical marks 
which he learned in the primary school wiU enable 
him to use the dictionary also as a standard of pro- 
nunciation. 

(i) Supplementary Reading. — Within recent years, 
especially since the "enrichment" of the course of 
study suggested by President Eliot and the Com- 
mittee of Ten, supplementary reading has formed 
an important part of the school programme. Instead 
of puttering for an entire year over a single primer 
or first reader, the first-year classes in a good school 
will read half a dozen or more books. In every 
subsequent grade supplementary readers in litera- 
ture are provided, and in the appropriate grades 



THE ENDS OF READING loi 

also readers in history, geography, nature, hygiene, 
etc. The object of supplementary reading may be 
summed up under three heads: Information, In- 
spiration, Taste. 

(a) Information. — The word supplementary im- 
plies that something is incomplete which may be 
made so by this kind of reading. There is first the 
incompleteness of knowledge. One has not time in 
the regular lessons of the class room to give the pupil 
that full and many-sided information which he needs. 
Even if the teacher had the time, the necessity for 
self-activity and self-direction on the part of the 
children would have to be met. The teacher is but 
a temporary guide and helper ; in a very few years 
his assistance will be withdrawn, and then the pupil 
must depend for the rest of his life upon himself. 
Therefore, as it has been said of old, the principal 
duty of the pedagogue is to make himself useless. 
This he can do only by training the pupil as soon as 
possible to take care of himself. Supplementary 
reading is one way of contributing to this important 
result. Here the pupil may read an entire chapter 
or book by himself, being held responsible at the 
conclusion for some account of what he has gathered. 
Or he may be told to get information of a certain sort 



I02 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

and be required to find it and work it up for himself. 
Such reading therefore supplements the knowledge of 
the textbook or of oral teaching by adding new facts 
and new points of view ; and it supplements the teach- 
ing method by throwing the pupil upon his own resources 
and thus contributing to his intellectual emancipation. 
Q}) Inspiration. — There are some books that are 
valuable not so much for the facts they contain as 
for certain emotions and enthusiasms they arouse. 
Such are the books of John Burroughs, Gilbert 
White, and Thompson Seton in nature study. 
Books of this sort may properly be included in the 
supplementary list. In fact, the writer is inclined 
to the opinion that we have overestimated the 
knowledge value of books and undervalued the in- 
spirational function. "I actually found out,'' writes 
Hugh Miller,^ "for myself that the art of reading is 
the art of finding stories in books. Those intoler- 
able nuisances, the useful knowledge books, had not 
yet arisen, like tenebrious stars, on the educational 
horizon, to darken the world." In this class fall 
works of the imagination, — stories, fables, fairy- 
tales, myths, legends, etc., all of which are intensely 
interesting to children. 

^ My Schools and Schoolmasters. 



THE ENDS OF READING 103 

(c) Taste. — Finally, supplementary reading of the 
right kind cultivates a taste for good literature 
by supplying standard books so entertainingly 
written that the pupil will want more of the same 
kind. The taste grows by what it feeds on. Our 
friends, the Herbartians, have a saying that it is 
better to send the pupil out into the world with a 
definite and well-formed interest than to fill him up 
with a required quantity of facts. So, if we form 
a taste for good reading, we need have no fear for 
the future education of the pupil. 

5. Grammar: Reading as Literature. — (i) What 
to Read. —Let it be repeated here that reading has 
by this time become a means of gaining and giving 
knowledge and pleasure from books. The pupils 
are from ten to fourteen years of age. The mechani- 
cal difficulties have been largely overcome, and a 
certain fluency has been acquired. The intelligence 
and capacity of the pupil have reached a stage of 
development which makes it possible to read litera- 
ture of good quality, of considerable length, and of 
a fair degree of difficulty. Complete masterpieces 
are demanded, both by common sense and the find- 
ings of psychological research. History of pioneers 
and other heroic characters is a dominating interest 



I04 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

at the age of twelve and onward. "It is this litera- 
ture of distinctly epic type that will interest him 
more than any other, and be good for him. Adven- 
ture and romance, heroism and daring, the wonders 
and excitement of travel and exploration, of march 
and siege, — upon these we may feed him. ... So 
we shall broaden his world and enlarge his sympa- 
thies . . . before he begins that adolescent work 
of introspection and self-analysis which tends to 
contract for a time his interests and sympathies." ^ 

Among the specific works which may be read with 
profit in the grammar grades, the following may 
be mentioned: Kingsley's "Greek Heroes"; Haw- 
thorne's "Wonder Book" ; Lamb's " Adventures of 
Ulysses" ; Ruskin's "King of the Golden River"; 
also the following poems: "Casablanca"; "Lucy 
Gray"; "The Wreck of the Hesperus"; "Miles 
Standish" ; "Tales of a Wayside Inn" ; "The Lays 
of Ancient Rome"; "Sohraband Rustum"; "The 
Merchant of Venice"; "Julius Caesar." 

We may also include some humor. The young 
child lacks this sense ; but in the middle and higher 
grades the pupil will appreciate the works of Mark 
Twain, Holmes, Saxe, Hood, Stockton, and Kipling. 

1 Chubb, The Teaching of English, The Macmillan Co., 1909, p. 125. 



THE ENDS OF READING 105 

Three classes of works should, says Mr. Chubb, be 
excluded from the elementary school ; namely : 
those that deal reflectively with the sentiment of 
adult love, e.g. "Enoch Arden"; those that are 
surrounded with an atmosphere of gloom, e.g. some 
of Hawthorne's stories ; those that lead to the solemn 
and darker mysteries of life, e.g. "The Christmas 
Carol"! 

6. The High School. — The only object of reading 
in the high school is the study and appreciation of 
literature. This, however, implies several subor- 
dinate aims, such as the meaning of words and sen- 
tences, and the principles of grammar, rhetoric, and 
composition. The requirements of the College En- 
trance Examination Board for the Middle States 
and Maryland are a fair illustration of the scope 
and aim of reading in the secondary schools of the 
country. The following analysis of the require- 
ments in English are quoted from the Board's Plan 
of Organization ; ^ — 

" (a) Reading. — A certain number of books will 
be set for reading. The candidate will be required 
to present evidence of a general knowledge of the 

^Op. cit., p. 129. 

^ Plan of Organization of the College Entrance Examination Board for 
the Middle States and Maryland, adopted May 20, 1900, N. Y., 19CX). 



io6 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

subject-matter, and to answer simple questions on 
the lives of the authors. The form of examination 
will usually be the writing of a paragraph or two on 
each of several topics, to be chosen by the candidate 
from a considerable number — perhaps ten or 
fifteen — set before him in the examination paper. 
The treatment of these topics is designed to test 
the candidate's power of clear and accurate expres- 
sion, and will call for only a general knowledge of 
the substance of the books. The candidate is ex- 
pected to read intelligently all the books prescribed. 
He is expected not to know them minutely, but to 
have fresh in mind their most important parts. In 
every case knowledge of the hook will be regarded as less 
important than the ability to write good English. In 
preparation for this part of the requirement, it is 
important that the candidate shall have been in- 
structed in the fundamental principles of rhetoric." 

Books, 1 901-1902 : Merchant of Venice; Pope's 
Iliad, Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV ; Sir Roger de Cov- 
erley Papers; The Vicar of Wakefield; The Ancient 
Mariner ; Ivanhoe; The Last of the Mohicans; The 
Princess; The Vision of Sir Launfal; Silas Mar- 
ner = 10, 

" (6) Study and Practice. — This part of the exami- 



THE ENDS OF READING 107 

nation presupposes the thorough study of each 
of the works named below. The examination will 
be upon subject-matter, form, and structure. In 
addition, the candidate may be required to answer 
questions involving the essentials of English grammar, 
and questions on the leading facts in those periods 
of English literary history to which the prescribed 
works belong." 

Books, 1901-1905 : Macbeth; Lycidas, Comus, 
L' Allegro, II Penseroso; Speech on Conciliation; 
Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison = 4. 

Recommendations : — 

"2. That the prescribed books be regarded as a 
basis for such wider courses of English study as the 
schools may arrange for themselves." 

"4. That a certain amount of outside reading, 
chiefly of poetry, fiction, biography, and history, be 
encouraged throughout the entire school course." 

"7. That each of the books prescribed for study 
be taught with reference to — 

"a. The language, including the meaning of words 
and sentences, the important qualities of style, and 
the important allusions ; 

"5. The plan of work, i.e. its structure and method ; 

"c. The place of the work in literary history, the 



lo8 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

circumstances of its production, and the life of its 
author." 

These provisions remain in force to-day substan- 
tially as they were first adopted twelve years ago. 
The only change is in naming a larger list of books 
from which to choose. The requirements for 1910- 
191 1 prescribe forty books for "reading," ten of 
which must be selected, and six books for "study 
and practice," four of which must be chosen.^ 

^ The Board's examinations are now accepted as a satisfactory basis 
for admission by every college and university in the United States ; 
but some colleges still continue to hold their own examinations. In 
June, 1 91 1, the Board examined 4096 candidates, while between five 
and six thousand candidates took the separate examinations. — See 
Educational Review, Feburary, 191 2, "The College Entrance Examina- 
tion Board," by Thomas S. Fiske, Columbia University. 



CHAPTER V 
METHODS OF TEACHING READING 

I. The History of Method in Reading. — The his- 
tory of method in reading naturally falls under two 
heads, — reading material and how to teach reading. 

(i) Reading Material. — The modern era in the 
pedagogy of reading begins with the Reformation. 
The first school readers in this period were distinctly 
religious. One by Ickelsamer, for instance, con- 
tained the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the 
Lord's Prayer, the Magnificat, and the Benedictus. 
Basedow is credited with a reform in the shape of a 
primer in which the children read of things pleasant 
to eat and to see, such as almonds, raisins, and apples. 
They learned German and Latin by means of play, 
and were rewarded with sweetmeats when they did 
good work. Eberhard von Rochow issued a read- 
ing book in 1776 containing moral tales, illustrat- 
ing the virtues of poHteness, modesty, and the hke. 
The author advised that the simple sounds be taught 
first in connection with the written and printed 

109 



no THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

names of familiar things. He laid emphasis upon 
oral work as a preparation. His book reached a 
circulation of one hundred thousand. Another 
primer by Christian Felix Weisze, issued at Leipzig 
in 1772, contained short stories, fables, songs, 
prayers, and little verses. The gradual change 
from the purely religious book to the secular ideal 
was not effected without earnest and bitter contro- 
versy. It is said that in one instance the people rose 
in insurrection because the Creed and the Lord's 
Prayer had been omitted from the primer. 

Such is the history of German reading books. In 
the United States a similar evolution occurred. 
Here, also, the religious ideal dominated the early 
schools. The New England Primer was the princi- 
pal school book for more than a century up to the 
year 1800. The origin of this remarkable book is 
traced back to a primer issued by Henry VIII in 
1534. Henry's primer contained "certain prayers 
and goodly meditations, very necessary for all people 
that understand not the Latin tongue." In 1679 
Benjamin Harris issued in London The Protestant 
Tutor, which was a school reader. Coming to Boston 
a little later, he reissued his primer in America in 
1685. Some time between 1687 and 1690 it was 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 



III 



reissued again under the title of the New England 
Primer. It soon became the most important book 
in the colonies. 



The copy which 
I have before me 
was printed 
about the year 
1785, a hundred 
years after the 
first edition. It 
contains a por- 
trait of George 
Washington, the 
A B C's, words 
of one, two, and 
three syllables, a 
series of illus- 
trated couplets 




In Aciam^s Fall 
We finned all. 

Thy Li re to mend. 
This Book attend. 

The Cat doth play. 
And after flay* 

A Dog: will bite 
AThiefatNight* 

An Eagle' flight 
Is out of fight. 

The idle Fool 
Is whipt at SchcoL 

Fig. 9. 



fsee Fig o) ex- -^ P^S^ from the New England Primer, actual 

size. 

tracts from the 

Bible, a "Cradle H3nim" by Watts, prayers, religious 
exhortations for the young, the Catechism, and a 
"Dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil." 
This book reflected in a marvellous way the spirit of 
the age that produced it, and " contributed, perhaps 



112 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

more than any other book except the Bible, to the 
moulding of those sturdy generations that gave to 
America its liberty and its institutions." ^ 

Another important American school book was 
Noah Webster's Speller, issued near the end of the 
eighteenth century. This speller is still in use and 
is said to have reached a circulation of a hundred 
million copies. "The edition in use previous to the 
revision of 183 1 comprized 168 pages, 14 of which 
are introductory; 66 contain words taken from the 
dictionary; 29 pages contain the names of persons, 
places, etc. ; 47 contain reading lessons. . . . The 
edition pubhshed in 183 1 contains several poems, a 
moral catechist, including abstract treatises on 
humility, mercy, anger, justice, gratitude ; . . . pre- 
cepts concerning the social relations, in which the 
young man, young woman, husband, wife, parent, 
and child are all briefly instructed and admon- 
ished." ^ 

Among other interesting devices formerly used 
for teaching children to read are the horn-hook, 
battledore, and sampler.^ The horn-book dates in 

1 From the preface of Ginn & Co.'s reprint. 

2R. R. Reeder, Historical Development of School Readers, Mac- 
millan, 1900. 

^ See Reeder, op. cit. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 113 

England from about 1450. It was a paddle 5 J inches 
long and 2J inches wide, with a handle. On one 
face of the paddle was pasted a piece of paper, which 
was protected by a transparent sheet of horn. There 
was printed on the paper first a cross, then the alpha- 
bet, large and small, next a line of vowels and com- 
binations of these with consonants. Below was the 
exorcism, "In the name of the Father and of the 
Sonne and of the Holy Ghost, Amen." Then fol- 
lowed the Lord's Prayer and the Roman numerals. 
The horn-book was used a 'so in the Dame Schools 
of New England. The chili trudged to school with 
the horn-book slung from his girdle by a string at- 
tached to the handle. Hence this couplet : — 

" Then after that he takes a pretty pride 
To wear the horn-book dangling by his side." ^ 

The earliest horn-books had the alphabet or a part 
of it arranged in the form of a cross ; hence " Criss 
Cross" and "Criss Cross Row" came to be a syno- 
nym for alphabet. 

In England children were fond of the game of 
battledore and shuttlecock, in which they employed 
a square paddle resembling a horn-book. Hence 
by and by the alphabet was painted or impressed 

^ Hombye's Horn-Book, London, 1622. 



114 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

or cut on one side of it, and the battledore served 
the double purpose of a book and a bat. In time 
it became the synonym for horn-book and primer. 
WiUis's Current Notes for October, 1855, has this 
paragraph: "Horn-books are now so completely 
superseded by the Battledore and the various forms 
of 'Reading Made Easy' that they are rarely met 
with, and few persons believe that such was formerly 
the means adopted to teach the young idea how to 
shoot." 1 

The sampler was a piece of embroidery done as 
a sample of skill in needlework. In New England 
it served the purpose of a horn-book for many genera- 
tions of little girls. It usually contained the alpha- 
bet, the Lord's Prayer, hymns, original verses, etc., 
and the name and date. The writer is permitted to 
copy the following contents of a sampler which is 
an heirloom in the family of Hon. Cyrus C. Miller, 
President of Bronx Borough, New York City : — 

Alphabet in large script. 

Line of embroidery. 

Alphabet in large capitals. 

Line of embroidery. 

Numbers from i to 16. 

^ Reeder, Historical Development of School Readers, Macmillan, 1909, p, 25. 



METHODS OF TEACfflNG READING 115 

Alphabet in small script. 

Line. 

Alphabet in small print. 

Line. 
iHow blest the Maid whom circling years improve 
Her God the object of her warmest Love 
Who sees her Parents Heart exulting high 
And the fond tear stands sparkling in their eye. 

Line. 

Picture of a house. 

Line of grass. 

Mary Caroline Allison Aged 10 years, N. York 
1818. 

Surrounding all a conventionalized flower border. 

Size 18 by 16 inches. 

(2) Method. — For many centuries the alphabetic 
method held exclusive sway. By this plan pupils 
are taught in various ways the names of the letters, 
then by learning to spell and pronounce the words 
they learn to read. The objections to this procedure 
are now obvious. The names of the letters have no 
relation to their power or significance as elements of 
words. To a child, d-o-g spells deogee, as Dr. Hall 
has well said, and not dog; so far as any clew to pro- 
nunciation is concerned, the letters might as well be 



ii6 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Greek — delta-omicron-gamma. Yet, arbitrary and 
slow as this method is, we must admit that the chil- 
dren did somehow learn to read by it. 

The first writer to protest against the folly and 
waste of the spelling method was Ickelsamer, who 
published a primer in 1534 in which the phonic 
method was advocated. Instead of the name of the 
letter, the child first learned its sound; and the 
author printed with each letter the picture of an 
animal whose voice or cry resembled the sound of 
the letter. Thus m was accompanied by a cow, r by 
a dog. The oral word was analyzed, and the pupil 
pointed to the pictures which represented the various 
sounds of the word. Unfortunately, Ickelsamer's 
reform was allowed to lapse into ''innocuous desue- 
tude," and for several centuries nothing more is 
heard of the phonic method. After him came Buno 
(1650) and Basedow (1774), each of whom had some 
special device for teaching by the alphabetic method. 
Buno printed his letters in the form of animals to 
facilitate learning. Basedow played games, and in 
his school bakery had sweet cakes and bread baked 
in the form of letters, so that the most doltish child 
"graduated from an alphabet diet of four weeks as 
an accomplished a-b-c-darian." ^ We may add here 

1 G. Stanley Hall, How to Teach Reading, D. C Heath & Co., 1897. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING ny 

that the alphabetic method was forbidden by law 
in Prussia in 1872, and several other German states 
have since followed. 

Pestalozzi had a phonic method, but it was so 
exceedingly mechanical and void of ideas that he 
himself lost faith in it. It was a word-building method, 
which begins with a single letter and by prefixing or 
adding other letters, forms a series of words, e.g., 
a, an, and, land, Pestalozzi's building was purely 
phonic, and did not even require words as the result 
of the successive buildings, e.g., g, ge, geb, geha, 
gebad, gebade, gebadet. 

Comenius and Ratichius advocated the so-called 
write-read method in the seventeenth century. It 
combines the teaching of writing and reading into 
one process. Plato seems to assume its prevalence 
in his day when he says the young "ought to be oc- 
cupied with their letters until they are able to read 
and write." Quintilian describes it in detail. The 
child, he says in his Institutes of Oratory, must not 
learn the names and order of letters until he learns 
their shapes. Letters are cut on a board, so that the 
pupil may trace their form in wax. This require- 
ment of Quintilian's is in accordance with the latest 
teachings of psychology, which says that care must 



Ii8 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

be taken to give a child just the right kind of motor 
experience when he learns to write. The read-write 
method is to-day common in Germany, France, Eng- 
land, and the United States. 

It remained for Jacotot, a Frenchman, to give us 
the analytic method of teaching reading. This starts 
with the principle that the mind proceeds from the 
whole to its parts and from the known to the un- 
known. In his teaching he would begin with Fene- 
lon's Telemaque, and have the children learn the 
first sentence, repeating it after the teacher, word 
by word, until the whole had been learned. Thus : — 

Calypso 

Calypso ne 

Calypso ne pouvait 

Calypso ne pouvait se consoler. 
The sentence was then written by the children 
from copy. Here we have the germ of the present- 
day methods which begin with a hterary whole and 
proceed from sentence to word, from word to letter 
and sound. The word-image and thought are of the 
first importance. The chief merit of the system is that 
it begins with ideas, with worthy content capable of 
arousing the interest of the child ; and by this means 
the image of the word is impressed upon the memory. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 



119 



The origin of illustrated books is traced to the 
pictured Bibles of the cloister. The best known 
of the early illustrated school books is the Orbis Pic- 
tus of Comenius, issued in 1657. So great was the 
influence of this book that Comenius has been called 
"the father of all picture books for children." The 
method of Comenius was adopted by the New Eng- 
land Primer. To what a stage of perfection the illus- 
tration of primers has now been brought, we all know. 

Reading machines were devices to secure the in- 
terest and self-activity of children in learning to 
read. The essential elements of the mechanism are 
a set of movable blocks or dice on which are stamped 
the letters of the alphabet. These are fitted into 
a frame and manipulated so as to spell syllables 
and words. The reading machines were used by the 
philanthropinists, and are still manufactured and 
sold. The nursery alphabet blocks constitute the 
machine reduced to its simplest form. 

The history of method shows us about every ele- 
ment of correct teaching as understood and prac- 
tised to-day by the most enlightened communities, 
thus confirming the statement of Solomon that 
there is nothing new under the sun. Most of the 
conclusions of psychological investigations have 



I20 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

been anticipated by empirical discovery. It must 
be admitted, however, that no one man in previous 
history advocated or combined all the elements of 
sound method ; but taking the course of history as a 
whole, we are able to cull out here and there prin- 
ciples and devices which, when combined, match the 
best thought and practice of the present generation. 

2. The Beginnings of Reading. — All reading to-day 
is taught by various mixtures of the word, sentence, 
and phonetic methods. Somewhere every system 
introduces sight words,^ which as soon as known are 
read in sentences. All authors recommend phonic 
work, although a few object to diacritical marks. 

(i) Some Definitions. — Before entering upon a 
fuller discussion of this phase of reading, it may be 
well to present a few definitions. The words phonic 
and phonetic are used in teaching parlance rather 
loosely and interchangeably. Phonic has reference 
to sound ; when, therefore, we teach children the ele- 
mentary sounds of the language, we are having a 
phonic drill. The word, however, covers any kind 
of sound in nature, no matter how produced. Pho- 
netic, on the other hand, relates especially to articu- 
late sounds, or sounds made by the human voice. It 

1 See Principles i8 and 19, p. 75. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 121 

also includes the representation of articulate sounds 
by characters, which phonics does not. It would 
seem, therefore, that in all cases phonetic is the better 
word to use in any discussion of sounds in connection 
with reading. 

Certain other terms have become familiar in the 
pedagogy of phonetics, of which the following are 
examples: — i 

A Phonogram is a written or printed representa- 
tion of an articulate sound. It may consist of one 
letter or of more than one ; as, /, s, I, ing, ight, ail. 
When the phonogram has but one letter, some 
authors call it simple; when it has more than one 
letter, they call it compound. 

A Sight Word is a word that has been taught as a 
whole, and is therefore recognized by sight alone. 

Sight Reading is reading sight words either singly 
or in sentences. 

A Phonetic Word is a word to be read by means of 
its phonograms. 

Phonetic Reading is the reading of phonetic words 
either singly or in sentences. 

A Blend is the combination of sounds, simple or 
compound, to form words. 

(2) Principles governing the Selection of Sight 



122 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Words. — The words to be taught in the beginning 
of reading must be selected in accordance with some 
definite aim and not in a haphazard way. I think 
the following principles should be observed : — 

(a) First, there must be some words needful for 
sentence building, like a, an, the, is, etc. 

(b) The words should represent ideas that are 
familiar and interesting to children, and should 
therefore be taken chiefly from their oral vocabulary. 

(c) The first words should have a concrete basis 
in the form of things or actions ; that is, the majority 
should be nouns or verbs. These two parts of speech 
constitute 80 per cent of a child's speaking vocabu- 
lary. (See Principle 3.) 

(d) If the method be analytic, the words are neces- 
sarily chosen from the first sentences of the reading 
matter of the grade. 

(3) Principles governing the Selection of Sounds 
to he Taught. — What sounds shall be taught first ? 
Here again it is better to name the principles of selec- 
tion and thus allow individual variations. The late 
Mr. Ward gave three principles which have been 
incorporated into the New York course of study, as 
follows : — 

{a) The sounds should be easily made. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 123 

(b) They should be easily prolonged without al- 
teration in character. 

(c) They should be common to many words in the 
vocabulary of a child. 

On the basis thus outlined Mr. Ward selects the 
following, and the New York course of study suggests 
most of them : /, /, m, n, r, s, a, e, 0, ing, ings, ight, 
ights. 

In the case of an analytic system, the above prin- 
ciples will hardly apply, for the teacher will be obliged 
to select all phonetic elements from the reading text. 
One very successful primer ^ begins with these 
phonograms: ake (from make), ill (from will), eat 
(from eat), all (from tall), because the words in 
which these elements occur are very prominent and 
frequently repeated in the first stories read. New 
words are formed by combining with the above 
phonograms the initial consonants m, b, c, t, r, I, w, s, 
etc. 

(4) Teaching Sight Words. — The method to be 
employed depends somewhat upon the theory of the 
reading system used by the teacher. With a syn- 
thetic method words are taught in isolation, in which 
case they are associated with the object or action for 

^ The Progressive Road to Reading, SUver, Burdett & Co., N. Y., 19C59. 



124 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

which they stand. Many schools are provided with 
dolls, toy animals, friuts, etc., which form the con- 
crete basis of reading work. The steps of the process 
in this case might be as follows : — 

(a) Present the object or picture of the object to 
the class and ask for the name of the same. Write 
or print the name upon the blackboard, telling the 
children what the word is. 

(b) If other words are already known, have a 
number of such on the board with the new word 
sandwiched in here and there. Let children find 
the new wherever it occurs. 

(c) After this, the word taught is printed or 
written upon a card in letters large enough to be 
read from the back of the room. All such words are 
reviewed every day by a rapid manipulation of these 
"perception cards." 

If the reading method be analytic, the plan might 
be as follows : — 

(a) The word to be taught is taken from a sen- 
tence which the children have already memorized 
and recited. 

{b) This sentence is written on the board, and the 
children are told what it says, e.g., This is the house 
that Jack built. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 125 

(c) Some child may find the word Jack; another 
huilt; another house. Underline these words, and 
let children point to them repeatedly. Next write 
the same words under the underlined words, and let 
children name them. Then write the words on dif- 
ferent parts of the board, and have them identified. 

id) Finally rub out the original sentence, and 
write the words on the board for independent 
recognition. 

{e) After this place them on the perception cards 
for daily drill. 

(5) Teaching Sounds and Phonograms. — The 
method may be analytic or synthetic. In the latter 
case the sounds would be taught in isolation and then 
combined into significant words. The analytic plan 
is the better. It may proceed in the following 
order : — 

{a) The first step is to discover the sound. Sup- 
pose it is represented by the phonogram .ight. The 
teacher writes upon the board the word light. She 
asks children to pronounce it ; then to pronounce it 
very slowly. 

(6) In this way the two sounds of the word will 
gradually dawn upon the consciousness of the chil- 
dren. Then she underlines the part which says ight. 



126 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

(c) The phonogram is then placed upon a percep- 
tion card for daily drill. The sounds of all phono- 
grams, whether they be single vowels and consonants, 
or compound elements, are taught in the same way. 
The three essential steps are : discover, isolate, drill. 

(6) Teaching the Blend. — After the sound and 
phonogram have been taught in the manner de- 
tailed above, we may extend the exercise in the fol- 
lowing manner : — 

{a) Suppose light has just been analyzed into / and 
ight. We may rub out the word and write the two 
phonograms with a short space between them. The 
pupil now slowly gives the sounds of / and ight, thus 
producing the original word. 

(h) After this we build new words with our phono- 
gram ight by changing the initial consonant, the 
children being required in each case to make the 
sound fusion mentally and then to pronounce the 
entire word at once. Some experienced teachers 
have found it expedient never to permit a child to 
voice the separate phonograms, but in word-building 
drills, at least, to require a full and perfect blend.^ 

(7) Correcting Errors. — Phonetic work in all grades 
of an elementary school should include the correction 

^ See Manual of The Progressive Road to Reading. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 127 

of characteristic errors of pronunciation. Every com- 
munity has its own pecuhar faults. Each nationahty 
has its special difficulty. The German has hard 
work with the soft th as in this and with. The 
Italian and the Russian find many sounds in Enghsh 
which are troublesome to the tongue. Each school 
and class will find out the dominant errors of its 
pupils and correct these by suitable drills. In ordi- 
nary cases it may be sufficient for the teacher to give 
the correct sound and ask the pupil to imitate her 
pronunciation. But in the case of foreign-born 
children or children born of foreign parents it is 
frequently necessary to take these several steps : — 

(a) Analyze the word into its phonetic elements. 

(h) Pronounce these separately for the pupil, and 
have him do so. 

(c) Blend the elements into the original word. 

{d) Drill on other words containing the difficult 
sound. 

{e) Show the pupil the position of the organs of 
speech in pronouncing the word or phonogram. 

(8) A Device for Beginners in Reading. — One of 
the difficulties in a beginners' reading class is that the 
little folks lose their places, and an enormous amount 
of time is wasted by the teacher in showing the pupils 



I2S THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

where to read. Ordinarily this loss is at the expense 
of the children ; but when a supervising official under- 
takes to test such a class he also shares the loss. I 
have tested hundreds of classes that required twenty 
minutes to read around the class, a sentence to a 
child, when five minutes should have sufficed. Now 
time consumed in showing children their places is 
not available for teaching. It is therefore worth 
while to eliminate this waste. It may be done 
effectively by the following simple device: — 

The teacher provides each child with an oak-tag 
strip as long as the width of the page and about an 
inch and a half wide. The children lay this strip 
upon the book in such a way that the line to be read 
is visible above the upper edge of the paper. A child 
is called upon to read line one. Then the teacher 
quietly remarks : "Move the paper," and each pupil 
slips the strip down far enough to expose line two. 
When that has been read, the operation is repeated. 
Thus there is not the slightest difficulty in keeping 
the place, and no time is lost. 

3. Methods of imparting the Content of a Reading 
Lesson. — Thus far we have been occupied exclu- 
sively by the mechanical side of reading, the mere 
conquest of symbols. This is of course the indis- 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 129 

pensable prerequisite to the next and more impor- 
tant step of mastering the thought and emotional 
content of what is read. 

(i) Impression and Expression. — All successful 
teachers of reading in the early primary grades divide 
the process, by one means or another, into two parts, 
impression and expression, getting the thought and 
giving the thought. It is the recognition of the 
principle that the child can do well only one thing at 
a time. Sometimes the teacher calls the impression 
"reading" and the expression "telling." She directs 
all the children to read the "story" (sentence or 
paragraph) and gives Mary permission to tell what 
she has read. In this way she employs social co- 
operation to maintain interest and at the same time 
secures the individual effort of every pupil. The 
neglect of the above device, the calling upon pupils 
in regular order to stumble over the page as best 
they may, while the rest of the class go wool- 
gathering or fall into disorder, is one of the common- 
est faults of poor teachers and one of the most pro- 
Hfic sources of waste in school. A cardinal principle, 
then, of primary reading, at least in the first year, is 
that a pupil must never be permitted to attempt oral 
reading until he has secured the thought by silent 



I30 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

preparation. In the lowest grades it is well to re- 
quire children to avert their eyes from the page while 
they tell what they have read, in order to induce the 
habit of reading thoughts rather than words. (See 
Principle 20,) 

In the higher grades the preparation of the lesson 
is in effect the impressive side of reading. It is the 
mastery of the content. This must be done before 
the class undertakes oral reading at all. It is very 
foolish to try to do both of these things at once ; for 
if the pupil is allowed to make an attempt at oral 
reading before he is properly prepared to do so, the 
result will be unsatisfactory in every respect. A 
child cannot express what he does not feel or under- 
stand ; and the hesitating, stumbling efforts at rea,d- 
ing which one often hears in class rooms are due 
entirely to insufficient preparation. 

(2) Lyrics (Primary). — The first principle we 
shall appeal to in presenting a literary masterpiece 
is that of congruity (Principle 8), which admonishes 
us that our mood must harmonize with the general 
spirit of the piece. In other words, the first step is 
to create a suitable atmosphere. Many of the great 
classics appeal primarily to the emotions; and Dr. 
Hall has well said that the "emotions are far more 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 



131 



independent of age than the intelligence." For this 
reason certain brief strains of l3n:ic poetry like 
Wordsworth's "We are Seven" and Emerson's "The 
Mountain and the Squirrel" exercise their spell upon 
a child of seven as effectually as on a man of seventy. 
The secret of successful treatment of any such work 
of art is to present it so that it will make the right 
kind of emotional appeal. We may illustrate the 
presentation of a lyric in the second year of school 
by reference to Shakespeare's Where the Bee Sucks : — 

" Where the bee sucks, there suck I; 

In a cowslip's bell I lie; 

There I couch when owls do cry. 

On the bat's back I do fly 

After summer, merrily. 

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now 

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." 

A preliminary explanation of the teacher brings 
home to the class the fact that this is the song of a 
fairy who inhabits with Oberon and Titania the 
world of grass and flowers. The atmosphere is 
created by the teacher's reading of the poem, in con- 
nection with her explanation. Possibly one or two 
words like couch and bough need clearing up, and this 
is all the preparation required. 

(3) Narrative Poem (Fourth Year). — A little more 



132 



THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 



elaborate is the treatment required of a narra- 
tive poem like Wordsworth's Lucy Gray: — 

1. Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray ; 

And, when I crossed the wild, 
I chanced to see at break of day 
The solitary child. 

2. No mate, no comrade Lucy knew ; 

She dwelt on a wide moor, 
— The sweetest thing that ever grew 
Beside a human door ! 

3. You yet may spy the fawn at play, 

The hare upon the green ; 
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray 
Will never more be seen. 

4. "To-night wUl be a stormy night — 

You to the town must go ; 
And take a lantern, child, to light 
Your mother through the snow." 

5. "That, father ! will I gladly do : 

'Tis scarcely afternoon — 
The minster clock has just struck two, 
And yonder is the moon ! " 

6. At this the father raised his hook, 

And snapped a faggot band ; 
He plied his work ; — and Lucy took 
The lantern in her hand. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 133 

7. No blither is the mountain roe : 

With many a wanton stroke 
Her feet dispersed the powdery snow, 
That rises up like smoke. 

8. The storm came on before its time : 

She wandered up and down ; 

And many a hill did Lucy climb : 

But never reached the town. 

9. The wretched parents all that night 

Went shouting far and wide ; 
But there was neither soimd nor sight 
To serve them for a guide. 

10. At daybreak on a hill they stood 

That overlooked the moor ; 
And thence they saw the bridge of wood, 
A furlong from their door. 

11. They wept — and turning homeward, cried, 

"In heaven we aU shall meet;" 
— When in the snow the mother spied 
The print of Lucy's feet. 

12. Then downwards from the steep hill's edge 

They tracked the footmarks small ; 
And through the broken hawthorn hedge, 
And by the long stone wall. 

13. And then an open field they crossed : 

The marks were still the same ; 
They tracked them on, nor ever lost ; 
And to the bridge they came. 



134 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

14. They followed from the snowy bank 

These footmarks, one by one, 
Into the middle of the plank : 
And further there were none ! 

15. Yet some maintain that to this day 

She is a living child ; 
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray 
Upon the lonesome wild. 

16. O'er rough and smooth she trips along, 

And never looks behind ; 
And sings a solitary song 
That whistles in the wind. 

I venture to present an abstract of the treatment 
of this poem suggested by Mr. Percival Chubb, one 
of the best authorities on the teaching of literature :^ — 

(a) The teacher reads the poem to secure total 
dramatic impression, making plain by her rendition 
that the little drama has three acts, a prologue, and 
an epilogue.^ 

(b) She explains just enough to remove difficul- 
ties and to create the right mood or atmosphere. 

(c) Then the children read stanzas in their natural 
grouping, beginning with the prologue as the first 
portion. 

^ The Teaching of English, p. 9,7. 

^Prologue, stanzas 1-3; Act I, stanzas 4-7; Act II, stanza ?>; Act 
III, stanzas 9-14; Epilogue, stanzas 15-16. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 135 

(d) The reading of each group is followed by ques- 
tions which may be necessary to clear up words and 
constructions that cause difficulty — no others. 

(e) Lucy's character is talked about. What kind 
of girl was she ? The answer is gathered from the 
verses. 

(/) Lastly, the poem is memorized, and thus a 
good, emotional, yet simple interpretation is se- 
cured. 

(4) The Total Impression. — With respect to a 
literary work, the essential thing is to grasp the whole 
with its interrelated parts. The httle drama of 
Lucy Gray illustrates in a nutshell what is meant by 
this statement. The same treatment is to be applied 
to any work whatsoever, whether it be "Julius 
Cffisar," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Wreck of the 
Hesperus," or Burke's "Speech on Conciliation." 
In the case of lyrics, which are often very brief, the 
unity may be so obvious that no time need be spent 
on it ; but in the case of ballads, or narrative poems, 
and prose works the careful study of the parts and 
their relation to the whole is highly important ; for 
only by such study may the pupil gain a comprehen- 
sion of the whole. In the upper elementary and high 
school grades, the first reading for total impression 



136 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

is usually done by the pupils themselves, either in 
class or at home ; but even here there may be oppor- 
tunities for the teacher to clear up difficulties, to 
create an atmosphere, and to deepen the impression 
by adequate vocal interpretation. The first reading, 
then, is always somewhat superficial, inasmuch as 
the object is a large view, a general effect, a com- 
prehensive glance. 

(5) Word Study. — An important step in the mas- 
tering of the content of the printed page is the study 
of words. Poetry especially is prolific of unfamiliar 
terms. The second reading will be concerned in 
unlocking these secret meanings. In the primary 
grades the teacher will develop the idea by means 
of context, by comparison with known things, by 
story, and by picture. In the higher grades the 
pupil will use the dictionary; but even here the 
teacher's assistance is frequently required, as defini- 
tions seldom give any new knowledge. The high 
school and college classics are usually provided with 
footnotes which remove difi&culties. Children should 
be carefully drilled in the use of diacritical marks, 
for without this knowledge the dictionary is of little 
or no use as a standard of pronunciation. They 
should have their attention called to the fact that 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 137 

the same word may be used in several senses ; and 
when they are looking up the meaning of a strange 
word, they should read all the definitions given, and 
then use their judgment as to which meaning applies 
to the word in the given passage. Pupils must also 
be cautioned against misreading definitions. I re- 
call a girl of foreign birth who looked up the word 
educated, and found that it meant "to bring up." 
Then she constructed this sentence to illustrate the 
use of the word : "The boy educated the chairs up- 
stairs." In the smaller dictionaries the definitions 
are necessarily much abbreviated, and consequently 
often as obscure as the word itself. This is the case 
when the word is defined by a synonym. True 
logical definition consists in naming the "genus" and 
"difference"; as, "A quadruped is an animal that 
walks on four feet." This definition affirms that 
quadruped is a member of a class called animals; 
"that walks on four feet" is the difference between 
quadrupeds and other members of the animal class. 
The dictionary defines many words by giving another 
word having about the same meaning. Derivatives 
are defined usually by giving the meaning of the 
affixes; as, "misdirection, the act of directing 
wrongly." In such cases the pupil obtains no real 



138 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

information unless he refers to the definition of the 
primitive word. All these points must be impressed 
upon children before one can expect them to make 
an intelligent use of the dictionary. We must, how- 
ever, not overwork the dictionary. It is not neces- 
sary for a child to know every word in order to appre- 
ciate a literary work ; and appreciation is our goal. 

(6) Grammar, Figures, Allusions. — In the upper 
grades, where the more difficult forms of literature 
are read, an important part of the interpretive pro- 
cess consists of a study of allusions, figures of speech, 
and grammatical forms. 

The following stanza may serve to illustrate the 
force of this statement : — 

" This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main, — _ 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings. 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair." 

Some account of the chambered nautilus and also 
of the "paper-nautilus" is necessary to under- 
stand such expressions as "ship of pearl" and 
the ethical and poetical force of the last stanza of 
the poem. Something, also, must be known about 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 139 

the mythical sirens of the Greeks and the mermaids 
of Northern lands. Without such knowledge the 
words of the poem fail to call up successively the 
pictures which are the very substance and life of the 
poem. But an explanation of these obscure allu- 
sions must not transform the reading lesson into a 
lecture on biology and mythology. Just enough of 
time and attention must be devoted to such details 
to render the meaning clear and to make the words 
adequate media for the revelation of the poet's vision. 
In other words, the full, free current of the thought 
and feeling must not be interfered with by excessive 
attention to details. The appreciation of the poem 
is the only object of the lesson, and all information 
that does not contribute directly and indispensably 
to this result is an impertinence. 

In teaching figures of speech, care should be taken 
not to make the subject a matter of formal defini- 
tion, but of poetic appreciation. The names of fig- 
ures are not so important as a lively sense of their 
peculiar appropriateness and beauty. To illustrate, 
let us take the following : — 

" To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
To the last syllable of recorded time, 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 



I40 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more ; it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing." 

A pupil may be able to define every figure treated 
by the rhetoricians, and still be unable to use or 
appreciate figurative language. A study of the above 
passage should give the child a lively sense of the 
beauty and appropriateness of the images conjured 
up by the poet's imagination. Life is a candle, a 
walking shadow, a poor player, an idiot's tale. All 
these comparisons are packed with consummate 
skill into a few short lines. That the reader should 
feel the beauty and power of this imagery is far more 
important than his ability merely -to name and 
classify the figures. 

(7) A Definite Aim. — " Indefiniteness of aim," 
says Mr. Chubb, "is one of the worst pitfalls in Eng- 
lish work, the parent of confusion and superficiality." ^ 
It is to be assumed that an author capable of writing 
a great literary work must have had a definite pur- 
pose in view. The teacher, therefore, in presenting 
a masterpiece to a class, must first ask herself, 

^ The Teaching of English, p. 154. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 141 

"What sort of impression did the author evidently 
mean to make?" Having ascertained that, the 
appropriate handling will follow. In the case of 
Milton's Paradise Lost, "the teacher's business is 
to treat the work so as to enable the student to 
feel and appreciate the elevation, the subhmity, the 
high seriousness of the poem, the magnificent pomp, 
the classic, 'grand style' of verse." ^ A poem like 
Browning's Incident of the French Camp may be 
useful chiefly for dramatic imagination and pre- 
sentation, and a good oral rendering by the teacher 
will remove all difficulties. To sum up: "We must be 
careful . . . not to do violence to a work by asking 
it to )deld a different sort of pleasure, or illustrate a 
different kind of excellence from that dominant one 
which it was designed by its author to yield." ^ 
Uniform treatment is therefore out of the question. 
Appropriate emphasis is the thing we want. To 
get this, the teacher must know what she wants to 
accompKsh before she meets the class. 

4. Reading as Expression. — We may recall undelr 
this head how important a part of language in the 
"chattering stage" are gesture, tone, inflection. A 
child by a single word accompanied by the auxiliaries 

^ Chubb, op. ciL, p. 153. 2 Chubb, op. cit., p. 157. 



142 



THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 



mentioned manages to express himself with satis- 
factory completeness (Principle 2). Likewise let us 
revert to Principle 11, which asserts that silent read- 
ing alone is not sufficient. The muscular image of 
expression is an important part of meaning, and is 
an essential element of learning. Principle 12 ex- 
horts us to employ the motor activities of children, 
since the development of brain fibres for motor, sight, 
and hearing areas reaches the maximum by the end 
of the second year. We learn further (Principle 13) 
that a word is the result of a voluntary activity of 
the mind, and that nature has provided a special 
area (Broca's Convolution) for the expression of 
words. In short, words are essentially motor, both 
as to meaning and as to memory. In all our thinking 
the motor image is present. Getting the thought is 
an important part of reading, but it is by no means 
the whole of reading ; it is only the analytic half of 
it. Phonetic drills, careful training in enunciation, 
pronunciation, pitch, rate, quality, and those other 
details which constitute the mechanics of reading, 
are little less important than the mental process of 
thought-getting itself. In fact, the images of muscu- 
lar movement involved in oral expression are indis- 
pensable to the real appreciation of dramatic passages 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 143 

and other literature that makes strong appeal to the 
emotions. Take the following stanza : — „ 

"Oh, better that her shatter'd hulk 

Should sink beneath the wave ! 
Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 

And there should be her grave! 
NaU to the mast her holy flag. 

Set every threadbare sail, 
And give her to the god of storms. 

The lightning and the gale!" 

Can any pupil feel the intensity of the poet's in- 
dignation and outraged patriotism who has not 
heard this declaimed and who does not accompany 
the words, even in silent reading, with images of the 
effort he would make in oral declamation? Many 
of the best selections in all our books are of this 
nature, and, therefore, systematic drill in the mechan- 
ics of reading is indispensable if reading is to yield 
its richest content as a school study. 

(i) Literature for the Ear. — "Literature is a thing 
for the ear as well as for the eye; indeed, it was 
originally a thing only for the ear." ^ Only within 
the modern era of printing has the eye enjoyed a 
monopoly of literary entertainment. "The pleas- 
ures of literature are enhanced by the cultivation 

^ The Teaching of English, Carpenter, Baker and Scott, Longmans, 1903. 



144 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

of the ear. The rhythms of verse and prose, the fit- 
ness between the sound and the idea, often escape 
the child unless he hears them. He has not learned to 
read literature until he has come to hear the sound while 
he reads silently, and the necessary equipment for this 
feat is a full memory of the sounds of literary pieces." ^ 
"The Greeks . . . regarded writing simply as a 
method of chronicling. Their test was always the 
spoken word in its musical and metrical relations. 
The voice was the medium, and the ear the critic. 
I have sometimes thought that the story of Homer's 
blindness might be really an artistic myth, created 
in critical days, and serving to remind us, not merely 
that the great poet is always a seer, seeing less with 
the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of 
the soul, but that he is a true singer also, building 
his song out of music, repeating each line over and 
over again to himself till he has caught the secret of 
its melody, chaunting in darkness the words that are 
winged with light. Certainly, whether this be so or 
not, it was to his blindness, as an occasion if not as a 
cause, that England's great poet owed much of the 
majestic movement and sonorous splendor of his 
later verse. . . . When Milton became blind he 

^ Carpenter, Baker and Scott, op. cit. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 145 

composed, as every one should compose, with the 
voice purely, and so the pipe or reed of earlier 
days became the mighty many-stopped organ whose 
rich reverberant music has all the stateliness of 
Homeric verse, . . . and is the one imperishable in- 
heritance of English literature." ^ 

Speaking on the necessity of systematic education 
in the elements of vocal expression, Corson says: 
"How is this essential life of a poem to be imparted ? 
By the fullest interpreting vocal rendering. That 
is, you must know how to read it — to exhibit the 
indefinable, spiritual atmosphere of the work by 
intonation, quality of voice, etc., as an accomplished 
elocutionist reads a favorite poem of Riley's. You 
can't do it by lecturing. A lecture about music is 
no substitute for a rendering of it. Verse, especially, 
must first be appreciated as an inseparable part of the 
expression; that is, felt in its organic character, be- 
fore it is analyzed, and it therefore needs more than 
prose, to be vocally interpreted." ^ 

In the play of Hamlet one of the most thrilling 
episodes is what is called the "Closet Scene" (Act 
HI, Scene IV): — 

^Intentions, by Oscar Wilde, Thomas B. Mosher, 1904, p. 103. 
2 The Aims of Literary Study, Hiram Corson, The Macmillan Co., 
1895, p. 106. 



146 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

^^ Hamlet. Look here, upon this picture, and on this, 
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. 
See, what a grace was seated on this brow : 
Hyperion's curls ; the front of Jove himself ; 
An eye like Mars', to threaten and command ; 
A station like the herald Mercury 
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill. 
This was your husband. Look you now what follows : 
Here is your husband ; like a mildew'd ear, 
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? " etc. 

The Queen, overcome by this terrible denuncia- 
tion, exclaims : — 

"No more!" 

But Hamlet proceeds : — 

"A murtherer and a villain ; 
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe 
Of your precedent lord ; a vice of kings ; 
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, 
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, 
And put it in his pocket! . . . 
A king of shreds and patches, — " 

It is here that the power of a great actor like Edwin 
Booth, whom the writer remembers in this connec- 
tion, displays itself. The sudden transition from 
the stern and pathetic, the angry and impassioned, 
to the horror at the appearance of the Ghost, can 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 147 

only be realized when the voice and action of the 
actor-artist accompany the lines of Shakespeare. 

The Queen does not see the Ghost; Hamlet does; 
and she exclaims : — 

"Alas! he's mad!" 

Then when she says, 
"Whereon do you look?" 

And he answers, 

"On him! on him! — Look you how pale he glares!" 

The Queen asks: — 

"To whom do you speak this ? 
Hamlet. Do you see nothing there ? 
Queen. Nothing at all ; yet all that is I see. 
Hamlet. Nor did you nothing hear ? 
Queen. No, nothing but ourselves. 
Hamlet. Why, look you there! look, how it steals away. 
My father, in his habit as he lived." 

All this time Hamlet, with his eyes fixed and finger 
pointed, follows the movement of the Ghost, and when 
he pronounces the words, "My father," the Queen 
shrieks, and the audience is ready to scream also 
with mingled amazement, horror, and admiration. 

I have heard it said that thought-getting is the 
only object of reading; and therefore silent reading 
should occupy most of the reading period. 



148 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

I reply that thought is only a part of the content 
of reading; the emotional element is frequently of 
far greater consequence than the intellectual. Will 
any one say that a pupil could get, from such a passage 
as I have quoted, any adequate realization of its 
soul-stirring passion by sUently reading it? It is 
impossible. In order to feel what is in the poet's 
lines, you must either express them orally, or hear 
some one else express them, or think them in the 
form of muscular images. The way you say a thing 
determines the way it impresses you ; and if you do 
not actually say it, the way you conceive the ex- 
pression, — the imaged emphasis, sHdes, pauseSj etc., 
— reacts upon the idea and helps to determine its 
power over your soul. 

For a detailed discussion of the elements of vocal 
expression, the reader is referred to manuals on elocu- 
tion.^ What is desired here is such emphasis of the 
importance of the subject that the teacher may feel 
the need of special preparation. In so-called art 
education there is now going on a slow revolution. 
Thousands of teachers are stud)dng the principles 
and receiving drill in the practice of drawing, design, 

1 Especially such works as Clark's How to Teach Reading in the Public 
Schools, Scott, Foresman & Co., Chicago, and Fulton and Trueblood's 
Practical Elements of Elocution, Ginn & Co., Boston. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 149 

picture study, etc., who a dozen years ago were con- 
sidered good teachers of drawing. Much the same 
thing is happening in music. Reading alone re- 
mains as it was twenty years ago, if, indeed, it has 
not deteriorated. The subject-matter of reading has 
vastly improved; but in the art of oral expression, 
no revival has come. We want to preach a new 
crusade. We want teachers to realize that reading 
is an art that requires special preparation just as 
much as music and drawing. We would not under- 
value subject-matter, nor the ability to abstract 
rapidly for one's own use the thought-content of a 
book. But we want in addition to these excellen- 
cies such a culture in the art of expression that the 
reader's own feelings may be aroused and his imagi- 
nation kindled. Thus will be increased mightily the 
power of literature upon reader and hearer. 

(2) High School Reading. — The best authorities 
insist that as the pupil ascends in the grades he shall 
hear not less, but more expressive, reading by the 
teacher. The emotional appeal has been empha- 
sized in the primary and grammar grades, and this 
is done chiefly by adequate oral rendering. But 
now we are to enable the student to appreciate 
subtler beauties, as revealed by the varieties and 



I50 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

intricacies of verse. This again is best accomplished 
by oral interpretation. Shakespeare especially needs 
the oral rendition. His lines were written chiefly to 
be heard, not read. Sir Henry Taylor says that he 
regards the reading of Shakespeare to boys and girls, 
if he be well read and they are apt, as carrying with 
it a deeper cultivation than anything else which can 
be done to cultivate them. "There are few gifts," 
says Mr. Chubb, "if any, that will atone for the 
absence in an Enghsh teacher of the powers to read 
Shakespeare well." Accordingly this author rec- 
ommends that the first reading of a Shakespearean 
play be entirely by the teacher, with a minimum of 
comment. Such a reading will leave upon the pupil 
a deep and lasting impression of the play as a whole, 
of the "rise and fall of emotional emphasis, and of 
its poetic power." . 

(3) S. E. Clark on Oral Reading. — Mr. S. H. 
Clark ^ has compressed ten valuable ideas on reading 
into a little booklet of 59 pages. According to this 
treatment the essentials of oral reading may be 
taught under the following heads : — 

(a) Words. 

"We must get the thought; we must hold the 

^ How to Read Aloud, published bj' the author, at Chicago University. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 151 

thought; and we must give the thought. This is 

reading aloud." To do this we must attend closely 

to individual words, so that we may have in mind 

clearly the ideas for which they stand. 

(6) Grouping. 

"I saw a man in a steam car." (Two groups.) 
*T went to King Street with my sister to buy a new hat." 
(Three groups.) 

Intelligence is shown and effectiveness produced 
by the correct grouping of the words to express 
succession of ideas. 

(c) Sentences. 

"I saw a cat, and a mouse, and a rat." 
"But when the gray dawn stole into his tent, 
He rose, and clad himself, and girt his sword, 
And took his horseman's cloak, and left his tent." 

The sentence is the unit of a complete thought, 
and the individual words and groups must be so 
pronounced as to convey clearly to the hearer the 
difference between the incomplete (word or group) 
and the complete (sentence) thought. This requires 
looking ahead, which for the beginner is a difficult 
feat. 

(d) Subordination. 

"The King of England, who was a very brave man, won 
several victories over the French." 



152 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

"During the Christmas vacation, which lasts ten days, I 
went to see my grandmother." 

Subordination is an important principle of all art. 
There is one dominant feature (sometimes more than 
one) and one or more subordinate elements. In oral 
reading, the voice must show the relative impor- 
tance of different parts of the sentence. 

(e) Transition. 

"There's a good time coming, boys, 
A good — Come in! " 

"'Halt !' The dust-brown ranks stood fast. 
' Fire ! ' Out blazed the rifle-blast." 

Here is a phase of reading not previously consid- 
ered — the sudden interruption of the train of 
thought by ideas that are foreign to it. In the last 
exercise a group was thrown in that seemed to ex- 
plain or supplement the principal thought. In the 
present case the first thought is driven entirely out 
of the mind by the second. 

(/) Emphasis. 

"IheardWilHamsayit." 

"I should rather be a lawyer than a doctor." 

The exact meaning of a sentence cannot be 
expressed without laying the emphasis on the 
proper words. Various meanings may be read 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 153 

into the above examples by a mere change of 
emphasis. 

(g) Emotion. (Sympathetic.) 

"Three cheers for our class !" 

"Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness !" 

Ideas and thoughts are not the only content of 
reading. Many passages appeal to the feelings. In 
the above instances the reader must imagine him- 
self in the situation of the one who utters the words, 
and then try to express the passage as the person 
so situated would do it. 

Qi) Emotion. (Personal.) 

"The other day a little child came to its mother, saying, 
'Oh, mother! I just saw a beautiful toy in the window; I 
wish you would buy it for me.' The sweet voice was full of 
pleading. The mother was very poor, and had hardly earned 
enough to pay for fuel. How could she spare even the few 
pennies for the toy? But she said to herself, 'This is Christ- 
mas time ' ; and the tears came into her eyes. The little one 
saw the tears, and said, ' What are you crying for, mother ? ' 
And then the mother hugged her child to her breast and kissed 
her again and again, saying over and over : ' Because I love you ! 
Because I love you!' 

"When Christmas morning dawned, the little toy was on 
the mantel, and the child was happy. But when the time 
for breakfast came, the child asked her mother why she did 
not eat; and the mother answered, 'I am not hungry, 



154 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

darling; don't mind me/ and she smiled tenderly upon the 
sweet face upturned to Idss her." 

Here, if one reads attentively and sympathetically, 
he is touched with real emotion, which will give his 
reading a tender and pathetic effectiveness. 

(i) Contrast. 

"Last week I was sleighing and skating in Minneapolis; 
but to-day I am plucking violets and japonicas in the gardens 
of Savannah." 

All art requires contrast. To heighten the effect 
of the lights in a picture the darks are introduced. 
So ideas are made more emphatic in reading by being 
contrasted with other ideas. 

(j) Climax. 

"I know it, I concede it, I confess it, I proclaim it." 

5. Class Criticism of Oral Reading. — Children 
inevitably make mistakes in reading as they do in 
other recitations. How shall these errors be cor- 
rected ? And what shall be the standard of accuracy 
to be insisted upon? Perfection we shall never 
attain because neither we nor the children are per- 
fect in anything. Our own standard may be im- 
perfect; and though the children succeed in satis- 
fying us, their performances may still be defective. 
If they do not reach our ideal, they may be nearer 
right than we are. In matters of fact, as in science 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 155 

and mathematics, it is possible to measure the degree 
of accuracy in the result, and to declare positively 
this is right and this is wrong. But in all forms of 
art, where perfection is a variable term depending 
on individual tastes, the measure of success is far 
more difficult than in the case of exact science. In 
drawing, for instance, what may we expect of the 
child? How accurate must he be in order to be 
credited with a satisfactory recitation? If our 
standard is too high, the pupil becomes discouraged, 
his spontaneity is crushed out of him, and he learns 
to measure his success by the nearness of his ap- 
proach to our arbitrary standard, thus becoming a 
mechanical imitator. If our standard is too low, 
if we accept any product he chooses to give us, how- 
ever slovenly and faulty, we can have no assurance 
that he will make any progress. 

(i) The Standard of a Good Recitation. — Some 
standard there must be, and a reasonable one is that 
the pupil shall have done his best. Imperfections 
which are clearly the result of inattention, indiffer- 
ence, and carelessness must be positively rejected 
and treated, by an earnest and conscientious teacher, 
as an affront. Careful discrimination on the part 
of the teacher is absolutely essential. Of two pupils 



156 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

equally successful when judged by an absolute 
standard, one may deserve praise and the other cen- 
sure when judged in the light of their relative abili- 
ties. Progress and fidelity deserve consideration 
quite as much as successful achievement. 

In reading, some elements, like the meaning, pro- 
nunciation, and spelling of words, are measured by 
the dictionary, which is a relatively constant and 
uniform standard. In spelling there can be no com- 
promise. Absolute accuracy is the only result that 
can be accepted. One might as well make truce 
with a false multiplication table as to praise a pupil 
for misspelling a word. The standard of pronuncia- 
tion is only a trifle less rigorous than that of spelling. 
Accuracy is the watchword. But when we come 
to such matters as the modulation of the voice, the 
grouping of phrases, the management of pauses, 
slides, gestures, facial expressions, etc., we are in 
the domain of art, where mechanical rules count for 
so little, and artistic temperament and method for 
so much. It would be quite impossible to account 
by rules for the success of Edwin Booth or Joseph 
Jefferson. There may be a dozen ways of reading 
a given passage, all effective, and yet so complex and 
subtle as to defy complete analysis and description. 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 157 

(2) Who is to criticise, and How ? — With the 
question of standard disposed of, we pass next to 
the consideration of the methods of criticism. And, 
first, who is to criticise? Shall the teacher assist 
every time the pupU hesitates? When an error 
occurs, shall the teacher or the class break in and 
make the correction, thus interrupting the current 
of thought in the reading ? 

We have two kinds of reading; namely, regular 
and supplementary. The regular lesson is usually 
prepared either in the class room or at home. Supple- 
mentary reading is frequently not prepared in the 
class and is never prepared at home. In the case 
of a prepared lesson, the average pupil under normal 
circumstances should make few mistakes in pronun- 
ciation. Expression, being an artistic process, may 
result in a greater number of errors ; but, the stand- 
ard being flexible, the mode of criticism must be 
different from that employed in the case of pronuncia- 
tion. Even in supplementary reading the lesson 
should be prepared if possible. But, the object of 
this form of reading being to supply information, the 
ground to be covered sometimes makes it impossible 
to spend much time on preparatory work. 

I believe a pupil should never be interrupted by 



158 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

teacher or pupil until he has reached the end of a 
paragraph. If he comes to a word which he cannot 
pronounce, instead of hesitating, he ought to be 
taught to pass on without trying to pronounce it, 
or to call it "blank." When he sits down, the pupils 
who have noticed the errors may raise hands; but 
in order to insure careful attention, the teacher 
should frequently call for criticisms from those who 
do not volunteer. These criticisms should be as 
simple and direct as possible and should never be 
unkind. If the error is in pronunciation, the pupil 
may say, "Blank was mispronounced," or he may 
simply give the correct pronunciation, without any 
explanation. If the mistake is in expression or inter- 
pretation, the pupil may state the error, give the 
correct form, and state his reason. The teacher 
should keep in the background and offer suggestions 
only to supplement or correct the class. In persist- 
ent or peculiar cases of mispronunciation the words 
should be written on the board and the entire class 
should be carefully drilled until the difficulty is over- 
come. 

6. Reading to Pupils. — We have already consid- 
ered the need and value of reading to pupils in the 
study of literature for the purpose of setting stand- 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 159 

ards of expression and securing adequate apprecia- 
tion through the ear. In the lower grades, also, 
such reading has its uses. The first reading of poetry 
especially should be done by the teacher. Before 
the pupil has acquired facility in the mechanics of 
reading the teacher reads much to supplement the 
meagre amounts read by the class itself. In another 
part of this book we have indicated the chief ob- 
jects of this reading and the books used in the several 
grades by the schools of New York.^ In the first and 
second years the amount read to children exceeds 
that read by themselves. From the third year up- 
wards the children read more than the teacher. 

7. Memorizing. — In all good schools the memoriz- 
ing of standard prose and verse is to-day a part of 
the prescribed work in EngHsh. In the syllabus of 
the New York schools the material to be memorized 
is suggested for each of the sixteen grades. What 
this means to the army of seven hundred thousand 
children who are thus absorbing culture it is difi&cult 
to exaggerate. What we learn in childhood we 
remember throughout life. The stores of lofty senti- 
ment, of happy diction, of poetic rapture thus laid 
by win serve in all the future as a source of supply 

1 Chap. VI. 



i6o THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

for oral and written speech. The ethical influence 
is no less important than the aesthetic. 

"Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, 
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, 
Our hearts in glad surprise 
To higher levels rise." 

The emotional stirrings which accompany the mem- 
orizing and proper recitation of masterful literature 
leave the pupil forever richer in the furnishings of 
the soul. 

I regret to say that, according to my experience 
as a supervisor of teachers, the memorizing of poetry 
is badly done. I have seen beautiful literature 
murdered in hundreds of classes; and I have also 
heard poems recited in a manner so vivid and con- 
vincing that the effect was simply thrilling. I fear 
that in the majority of class rooms the poems are 
merely given to the children to memorize without 
being explained, interpreted, or read aloud. The 
result is deplorable. It is even exceptional to find 
a class in which the children give evidence of ade- 
quate comprehension by proper expression. This 
very day I examined a fifth-year class on memory 
work. A girl was called upon to recite Longfellow's 
The Arrow and the Song. She went through the 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING i6i 

piece in a monotonous and mechanical sort of way, 
indicating clearly enough that she was merely re- 
calling words in a given sequence rather than de- 
livering a worthy message for the uplift of the class. 
Here is the poem : — 

" I shot an arrow into the air, 
It fell to earth I knew not where ; 
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
Could not follow it in its flight. 

" I breathed a song into the air. 
It fell to earth I knew not where ; 
For who has sight so keen and strong 
That it can follow the flight of song ? 

" Long, long afterward, in an oak 
I found the arrow still unbroke ; 
And the song, from beginning to end, 
I found again in the heart of a friend." 

I asked the little girl what is meant by the last 
two lines. Apparently it had never occurred to her 
that the words meant anything. The class had not 
been trained to look for meaning. They recited the 
words as if words, as such, satisfied the requirements 
of the situation. There was not a single pupil in 
this class who could give an intelligent answer to my 
question. When I suggested to the girl who had 



i62 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

recited that she was the "friend" in whose heart this 
particular song might be found, the whole class 
awoke with a new interest. 

The moral of this experience is that to cast these 
precious gems of literature at the feet of children 
without telling them what to do with them or how 
to appreciate them is almost a capital crime. In 
every instance these pieces should be given to the 
children, if possible, in printed or typewritten form. 
And this is possible, for a well-known house pub- 
lishes a series of books containing all the poetry for 
memorizing prescribed by the principal cities of the 
United States. The poem should then be read by 
the teacher. Any explanation necessary for the 
creation of the proper mood or atmosphere must be 
made in connection with the reading. Then the 
children must learn to read themselves, every pause, 
emphasis, slide, being carefully noted and understood. 
Only then should the class be allowed to memorize 
the words. 

8. Story-telling. — Blessed is the teacher who 
knows how to tell stories ; for she is a well-spring of 
joy to her pupils and mistress of one of the most 
useful tools of education. In the primary grades 
there is reading by the pupils, reading to the pupils, 



METHODS OF TEACHING READING 163 

and memorizing of poetry. There should also be 
some story-telling. What story-telling is, and what 
stories to tell, has been recently made very plain by 
Miss Bryant's two volumes on the subject. But the 
art of handling stories cannot be taught by books. 
In its best form it is a natural gift chiefly; for it 
involves the knack of gesture, intonation, and facial 
expression to indicate surprise, anger, joy, sorrow, 
transition, suspense, and the whole gamut of human 
emotion. For the majority, unfortunately, it is not 
a gift, but an acquisition. It is of course impossible 
here to define the elusive charm of a good story- 
teller. But a few elements of success may be briefly 
outlined as follows : — 

(i) The teacher must know and like children, and 
have imagination enough to sympathize with their 
point of view. 

(2) She must master the story she would teU in 
all its many-sided possibilities. The main topics 
should be firmly held in mind, so that the narrative 
may proceed in logical order. 

(3) She must have skiU in the use of apt, simple, 
and forceful language. 

(4) She ought to have a charming personality, 
musical intonation, clear enunciation, refined pro- 



1 64 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

nunciation, with all the magic of personal coloring 
and mimicry. 

(5) She must, "without the aid of lute or lyre, 
chant or interlude, be a magician of all childish moods, 
in the compass from grave to gay; able to touch 
lightly the minor chords that are needed to bring out 
the triumphant major passages." ^ 

(6) "Imagination and feeling," says Richard 
Thomas Wyche,^ "are two essential elements in 
hterature. He who tells a story must deal with 
these as he would with an intimate friend. . . . He 
must feel that heroism and self-sacrifice that entered 
into Ulysses as he said farewell to Penelope and her 
people, and with hopes sailed away to Troy to rescue 
Helen, the stolen queen. ... He must feel his 
sorrow and disappointment when his ships were 
swept out of their course and he became a wanderer 
over the face of the deep. . . . But the mental 
processes of expression are more than seeing and 
feeling. One must will. He who would tell a story 
successfully must take the bit in his teeth ; believe in 
himself, will that his audience see with him the mental 
pictures, and feel with him the truth of the story." 

1 Chubb, The Teaching of English, The Macmillan Co., 1909, p. 44. 

2 Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them, by Richaxd Thomas Wyche, 
Newson & Co., N. Y., 1910, p. 92. 



CHAPTER VI 

A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 

A SUPERVISOR of schools is required constantly to 
pass qualitative judgment on the work of teachers. 
He ranks the abilities of his subordinates as good, 
bad, or indifferent. Generally the teacher's license 
or tenure of emplo)anent depends upon the rating 
thus given. It is evident, however, that the effi- 
ciency of teaching is determined by quantity as well 
as by quality. One is not able, by a half-hour's ob- 
servation alone, to say with perfect assurance that 
the work of a given class is in all respects satisfac- 
tory, for the method of doing a piece of work may 
be quite correct, whUe the net result may at the same 
time be unsatisfactory. Thus, in reading, the mode 
of presentation may be faultless, the fluency and 
expression of the pupils may be admirable, yet the 
work as a whole may be a miserable farce because 
too little ground has been covered. To be entirely 
. certain that reading has been well taught, one must 

i6s 



1 66 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

know not merely how glibly a given lesson is read, 
but also the quantity of material that has been mas- 
tered. 

How shall we determine the amount read ? What 
shall be the unit of measure ? What is a reasonable 
amount of reading for each of the several grades of 
an elementary school ? What is the relation of the 
quality and quantity of the reading to the amount 
of time devoted to the subject ? 

These and kindred questions the present inquiry 
is designed to answer. 

I. The Unit. — It is evident that the page is not 
a satisfactory unit of measure, because it is not a 
fixed quantity. Pages vary in size, as well as in the 
kind of type and spacing. The most perfect kind 
of measurement is that in which the unit itself is 
measured. Counting eggs is a crude way of esti- 
mating value, because some eggs are large and some 
are small. Measuring wheat by the bushel is inac- 
curate, because the measure may vary by being level, 
heaped, shaken down, or by some other mode of 
modification. Therefore, when large quantities of 
wheat are handled, the bushel is measured in terms 
of pounds, and wheat is sold by weight. 

In this study the word is the primary unit of meas- 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 167 

ure. It is true that words differ in length, but, on 
the whole, a thousand words of reading matter con- 
stitute a pretty constant factor, unmodified by size 
of page or type or spacing. In order to avoid the 
use of too many figures, I have adopted the derived 
unit of one thousand words for all quantitative com- 
parison of reading matter. The reader will interpret 
the figures in the tables which follow accordingly. 

The blank used in the investigation was prepared 
by the writer and sent out at the close of the term 
ending June 30, 1910, to each of the twenty- three 
schools in his district. The returns exhibit the work 
of over 700 teachers and about 30,000 children. 

Report on Reading 
During present term to date : 191 

P. S Bor. of Class Teacher 

Note i. — In making up this estimate for mas- 
terpieces read in the upper grades, only matter that 
has been completed by first, second, and third read- 
ings as required by the syllabus is counted. Under 
(a), (b), etc., the names of masterpieces should be 
recorded, as well as the titles of supplementary read- 
ers in geography, history, etc. 



i68 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Note 2. — In estimating the amount read, count 
the words on a full page and multiply this number 
by the number of pages read, deducting space occu- 
pied hy pictures, maps, etc. 

Note 3. — In cases where a number of classes of 
the same grade are taught by a departmental 
teacher, a single blank will do for aU classes having 
read the identical material. The names of all such 
classes included in the report should be entered at 
the top of the blank. The figures will represent 
what each class has done. 

1. Name of basic or grade (j) 

reader {j) 

2. Names of additional or {k) 

supplementary readers : — 4. Names of stories 
(a) dramatized : — 

(J) (0 

W {m) 

W («) 

[e) («) 

3. Names of booksusedin {p) 

reading to the class : — {q} 

(/) w 

« w 

W {t) 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 169 

W W 

(v) W 

(v) W 

5. Number of different words of all kinds taught 

(lA or iB) 

6. Estimated number of words of reading matter 

covered this term in basic reader 

7. Estimated number of words of reading matter 

covered in (a) 

8. Estimated number of words of reading matter 

covered in (b) 

9. Estimated number of words of reading matter 

covered in (c) 

10. Estimated number of words of reading matter 

covered in (d) 

11. Estimated number of words of reading matter 

covered in. (e) 

Total 

12. Estimated number of words of reading matter 

covered in reading to the class 

1 3. Number of stories dramatized to date 

14. Number of minutes per week devoted to read- 

ing: (a) basic or grade (+ memory and pho- 
netics) ; (b) supplementary (all 

other, including reading to class, but exclud- 



1 70 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

ing spelling, meaning, use, etc.) ; 

(c) Total 

I have inspected the above report and believe it 
to be correct. 

(Signed) Principal. 

Please mail this report within three days to the 
District Superintendent. 

2. Number of Words taught in the First Year. — The 
New York syllabus in reading requires that the pupil 
shall be able to recognize promptly and to pronounce 
correctly at least 300 words during the first term of 
the first year and at least 300 additional words during 
the second term. This study shows the following 
results: the average number of words taught dur- 
ing the first half-year in 23 schools is 520 ; the aver- 
age number during the second half is iioo. These 
schools therefore are doing much more than is de- 
manded of them. The range of words is from 300 to 
1575 for the first term, and from 350 to 2368 for the 
second term. For the entire year the average is 1620; 
the range is from 650 to 3556. The schools are there- 
fore teaching nearly three times as many words as the 
syllabus requires ; and when a teacher complains that 
the board of education demands too much, the an- 
swer is obvious. 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 171 

3. Total Amount Read. — Below will be found the 
average amount read in the several schools of the 
district during each of the eight school years, to- 
gether with the average time devoted to reading as a 
separate exercise. Time is given in terms of minutes 
per week. 

Average Amount read in 23 Schools 

(Unit = 1000 words) 
Year ... 12345678 Total 
Quantity . . 25 59 118 198 197 180 95 108 980 

Time . . . 416 365 306 220 216 188 155 135 

The course of study prescribes the minimum time 
that may be devoted to English, but permits the 
principal to apportion this total among the several 
branches of English at his own discretion. The min- 
ima given are as follows : — 

Minimum Time for English 

Year ... 12345678 

Time ... 450 510 450 375 375 375; 360 320 

As grammar, word-study, composition, etc., de- 
mand more time in the higher grades, reading time 
gradually tapers off. 

The maximum amount of reading is done during 
the fourth, fifth, and sixth years. Several reasons 



172 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

may be assigned for this. First, tliese are the grades 
where much supplementary reading is demanded in 
history, geography, science, and Hterature. Sec- 
ondly, in the highest grades, the pupil prepares his les- 
sons out of school hours, and does much of his reading 
at home. Finally, in the seventh and eighth years, 
masterpieces of English are read. These are very 
difficult and require three separate readings, as fol- 
lows : the first, to get a general idea of the argument, 
drift, or plot ; the second, to master the difficulties of 
word-study, construction, figure, or allusion; the 
third, to secure expressive reading of selected pas- 
sages. 

4. The Books used in Reading by Children. — In 
New York we have an open book list. The board of 
education, on the recommendation of the board of 
superintendents, puts upon the list all the books and 
general supplies deemed worthy ; and upon each prin- 
cipal, subject to the approval of the district super- 
intendent, devolves the duty of selecting from the 
official list the supplies used in his school. A certain 
per capita allowance of money is apportioned to each 
school, and the board of education puts no restric- 
tion upon principals save that they must order from 
the list and keep within their allowance. 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 173 

The result of this system is, in the judgment of the 
writer, very satisfactory. The principal has thus a 
chance to assert his individuality in the choice of the 
materials of instruction. Responsibility goes with 
power. If he shows poor judgment, he must bear the 
consequences. If he wastes his substance early in 
the year on expensive books and later lacks funds for 
paper and pencils, — the bread and butter of a school, 
— he alone is to blame. The knowledge of such re- 
sponsibility sobers him into reflection, and makes him 
a far more valuable executive than he would be if 
some one benevolently undertook to do all his think- 
ing for him. 

With an open book list, one would naturally expect 
to find great variety in the choice of books. The 
following partial Hst of readers used in the several 
grades by the schools of this district shows that such 
expectation is fully realized. No class is limited to a 
single reader. The number of books read in each 
half-year grade during the first three years averages 
about three per class, and ranges from two to six. 

First Year 

Ward's Primer and First; Jones's First; Aldine 
Primer and First ; Cyr's Primer and First ; Baldwin's 



174 THE PRINCIPLES^ OF TEACHING READING 

First ; Culture Readers, I (Miss Merrill) ; Finger 
Play Reader, I (Davis and Julien) ; New Education, 
First ; Graded Literature, I ; The McCloskey Primer ; 
Stepping Stones, I ; Child Life, I (Blaisdell) ; Lan- 
sing's Rhymes and Stories; Folk Lore Stories and 
Proverbs (Wiltse) ; Eugene Field Reader ; Pathways 
in Nature and Literature; Summer's Primer; Pro- 
gressive Road, I (Ettinger) ; Horace Mann, First ; 
Art and Life Primer (Jacobs). 

Second Year 

Ward's Second and Third; Heath's Second; 
Fables and Rhymes for Beginners ; Pets and Compan- 
ions; Brumbaugh's Second; Blaisdell's Child Life, 
II; Wilson's Nature Study in Elementary Schools; 
Wade and Sylvester, II ; Wake Robin, I ; Baker and 
Carpenter's Second; Cyr's Graded Art Reader; 
Baldwin's Second ; New Education, Second ; Culture, 
Second; Graded Literature, Second; Cyr's Second; 
Grimm's Fairy Tales ; Book of Plays for Little Actors ; 
In Mythland ; Reynard the Fox ; Aldine, Second. 

Third Year 

Ward's Third ; Heath's Third ; Buckwalter's Third ; 
A Child's Book of Poetry; Blaisdell's Child Life, 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 175 

III ; All the Year Round, III ; Grimm's Fairy Tales ; 
Baker and Carpenter's Third; Jones's Third; Child 
Life in Tale and Fable; Graded Literature, Third; 
Feathers and Fur; Graded Classic, III; Hazen's 
Third ; Baldwin's Third ; Pinocchio ; Alice in Wonder- 
land ; Cinderella and Other Stories ; Stepping Stones, 
III ; Cyr's Third ; Four New York Boys. 

Fourth Year 

Heath's Fourth; Wake Robin Series, II; Little 
Wanderers; Good Health for Girls and Boys; 
Twilight Stories; Four New York Boys; Sprague's 
Classic Reader, IV ; Good Citizenship (Richman and 
Wallach) ; Baker and Carpenter's Fourth ; Stories of 
American Pioneers; Nature Study Made Easy; 
Longman's Geographical Reader; Stepping Stones, 
IV; Graded Literature, IV; Maury's Geography; 
StraubenmiiUer's Home Geography; Little Lame 
Prince ; Dickens's Christmas Carol ; Robinson Cru- 
soe; Spyri's Heidi; Brumbaugh's Fourth; Dodge's 
Elementary Geography. 

Fifth Year 

Four New York Boys; Graded Literature, V; 
Black Beauty; Brumbaugh's Fifth; Geography 



176 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Primer (Cornman and Gerson) ; Heath's Fifth ; Cyr's 
Fifth ; Geography of New York (Smith and Perry) ; 
ChannJig's First Lessons in United States History; 
Baker and Carpenter's Fifth ; Barnes's Elementary 
History; Kingsley's Greek Heroes; Shaw's Discov- 
erers and Explorers; King of the Golden River; 
Stepping Stones, V. 

Sixth Year 

Heath's Sixth; Carpenter's South America; Gulick's 
Town and City; Graded Literature, V and VI; 
Dodge's Geography, IV; Jones's Sixth; Builders of 
Our Country ; How to keep Well ; Baker and Car- 
penter's Sixth; Frye's Complete Geography; Tarr 
and McMurry's Europe ; Stoddard's Lectures ; Poems 
of American Bravery (Mathews) ; Blaisdell's Hero 
Stories from American History; Jewett's Town and 
City; Tarr and McMurry's Geography, II; Eggles- 
ton's First Book in American History ; Tanglewood 
Tales ; Hawthorne's Wonder Book ; The Man With- 
out a Country; Grandfather's Chair. 

Seventh Year 

Courtship of Miles Standish; Snow Bound; 
Irving's Sketch Book; Evangeline; Rolfe's Tales 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 177 

from English History; Franklin's Autobiography; 
Great Stone Face; Tales of the White Hills; Bur- 
roughs's Birds and Bees ; Lessons in Hygiene ; Birds 
and Bees and Sharp Eyes. 

Eighth Year 

Lady of the Lake ; Julius Caesar ; Sohrab and Rus- 
tum; Gettysburg Address; Epoch-making Papers; 
Merchant of Venice; Lamb's Tales from Shake- 
speare; Washington's Farewell Address; Lincoln's 
Second Inaugural ; Warner's A-Hunting of the Deer ; 
Adams's Commercial Geography ; Tarr's New Physi- 
cal Geography; Webster's Reply to Hayne. 

5. Reading to Pupils. — The New York syllabus 
requires the teacher to read to the pupil during the 
first four years of the course. The subjects and books 
to be used for this purpose are suggested, and the four 
aims to be kept in view are enumerated as follows : 
" (i) To develop an interest in reading, (2) to culti- 
vate the imagination, (3) to present a model of ex- 
pression, and (4) to create ideals of right living." 
While the requirements of the course limit such work 
to the first four grades, this investigation shows that 
the schools of one district voluntarily continue the 
same through all the remaining grades. The follow- 



1 78 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

ing table exhibits the average amount read to children \ 
in each of the eight years : — 

Amount read to Children 

(Unit = looo words) 
Grade ...12345678 Total 
Amount . . 42 62 64 70 68 51 34 16 407 

The books from which this reading is done are very- 
numerous. We give a partial list selected from the 
returns : — 

First Year 

Stories to tell Children; Pets and Companions; 
Legends of the Red Children (Pratt) ; Boston Col- 
lection of Kindergarten Stories ; Rhymes and Fables 
(Haaren) ; Grimms' Fairy Tales ; Tale of Peter 
Rabbit; Three Bears; Child's Garden of Verse; 
R. L. Stevenson Reader; In the Child's World 
(Poulson) ; Andersen's Fairy Tales ; ^sop's Fables ; 
Mother Goose Rhymes; Nursery Stories and 
Rhymes (Poulson). 

Second Year 

Grimms' Fairy Tales; Book of Fables; Health 
of Little Folks ; Scudder's Fables and Folk Stories ; 
Month by Month (WilUs and Farmer); All the 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING lyg 

Year Round ; Five Minute Stories (Richards) ; 
Child Life, II; Parts of Children's Library Books; 
Stories to tell to Children ; Andersen's Fairy Tales ; 
Stevenson's Poems; Famous Stories Every Child 
Should Know. 

Third Year 

Black Beauty ; Beautiful Joe ; Young Folks' Fairy 
Stories ; Hiawatha ; How to tell Stories to Children ; 
Fifty Famous Stories; Robinson Crusoe; Blue 
Fairy Book; Poems of Longfellow and Whittier; 
Little Lame Prince ; Stories of Long Ago (Kupfer) ; 
Shy Neighbors ; Granny's Wonderful Chair (Browne) ; 
Our Birds and their Nestlings. 

Fourth Year 

Glimpses at the Plant World; The Wild World; 
Little Lord Fauntleroy ; King of the Golden River ; 
Boys of Other Countries; The Wonder Book; 
Alice in Wonderland; Arabian Nights; Joyous 
Story of Toto; The Dog of Flanders (Ouida) ; The 
Story of the Romans; Poems from Holmes; A 
Home Geography of New York City; Jungle 
Book. 



i8o THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Fifth Year 

Robinson Crusoe; Blaisdell's Story of American 

History; The True Story of Abraham Lincoln; 

Longfellow Leaflets; Heroes of American History; 

Captain January; Good Citizenship (Richman) ; 

The Story of Patsy ; Swiss Family Robinson ; Dole's 

The Young Citizen; Discoverers and Explorers 

(Shaw) ; Hoosier Schoolboy ; Stories from Mark 

Twain; Nature Study Made Easy; Horatius 

(Macaulay) ; Ulman's Landmark History of New 

York. 

Sixth Year 

Carpenter's Geographical Reader; Tarr and 

McMurry's Geography ; Gordy's History of United 

States ; McMaster's School History of United States ; 

News Items brought by Children ; Ethics of Success 

(Thayer, Bk. II) ; Man Without a Country ; A 

Ghl of '76. 

Seventh Year 

Legend of Sleepy Hollow; Story of Acadia; 
Chronicles of Tarrytown, etc. (Bacon) ; Literary 
Pilgrimages in New England; Dickens's Child's 
History of England; Rolfe's Tales from English 
History; Carpenter's North America; Mowry's 
English History. 



J 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING i8i 

Eighth Year 

Shakespeare; Literary Pilgrimages in England 
(Bacon) ; Plutarch's Lives ; Literary Digest ; Cur- 
rent Events; Poems of American Patriotism 
(Mathews) ; Open Sesame, II, III ; David Harum ; 
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm; Leak in the Dike; 
Fiske's American Revolution. 

6. Relation of Quantity, Quality, and Time. — 
During the school year ending June, 1910, the writer 
made a personal examination of the reading ability 
of more than 15,000 children, registered in 333 classes. 
He is therefore able to compare reading efficiency 
with the time devoted to reading. The results were 
recorded in each class at the time of the visit and 
were afterwards summarized by schools. The suc- 
cess of the reading was indicated by letters, as 
follows: A, B-f-, B, represent satisfactory work, 
A being the highest grade; C and D represent un- 
satisfactory work. In the table which follows are 
shown in close juxtaposition the number of the school 
(fictitious), the amount read in eight years, the aver- 
age time allowance per grade, and my estimate of 
the reading of the school. Only eighteen of the 



1 82 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

twenty-three schools are included in this comparison 
because five of the number lack one or more of the 
upper grades. 

Comparison of Time, Quantity, and Quality 

School .. 123456789 

Amount . . 1017 830 781 1146 1269 653 729 978 956 

Time . . . 248 232 240 244 235 240 233 336 206 

Proficiency. B B-|- B+ C B-fB+ B+ B-f- B 

{Continued) 

School . . 10 II 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 

Amount . . 988 813 948 1784 917 923 1147 1270 816 

Time . . . 331 233 281 252 251 252 248 236 236 

Proficiency . B B+ B+ B+ B+ B-f- B+ B B + 

So far as time and efficiency are concerned, this 
table demonstrates once more the well-known prin- 
ciple that educational success is due far more to 
masterful administration than to the individual abil- 
ity of teachers. The four schools marked B employ 
on an average 255 minutes for reading, the twelve 
schools rated B+ use only 252 minutes, while the C 
school has 244 minutes. It will be recalled that Dr. 
Rice in his spelling investigations discovered similar 
conditions. The school that had only six minutes a 
day could spell quite as well as another that had 
fifty minutes. Expert supervision is the dominating 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 183 

factor of the educational situation. In a well-super- 
vised school the children are proficient in their 
studies; in a poorly supervised school they are de- 
ficient. This proposition has no exceptions, and 
holds, within limits, irrespective of the time that 
may be devoted by the course of study to any given 
subject. 

A comparison of quantity and quality seems to 
indicate that fluency in reading varies indirectly as 
the amount read. The B + schools read on an aver- 
age 968 units in eight years. The B schools read 
1057 units. The C school reads 1146 units. This 
indicates that when too much is attempted the qual- 
ity deteriorates. If you test the children of a class 
that has read an abnormally large amount, you 
generally find them deficient. They do not know 
the meaning of words, and therefore read without flu- 
ency and without proper expression. They confirm 
your suspicion that they have not been taught read- 
ing, but have been merely dragged over the ground. 
Such work is inefiicient and demoralizing. In the 
first place it discourages children and oppresses them 
with a sense of failure. But the essential thing is 
to establish in the child the habit of success, which 
can only be accomplished by giving him a finishable 



1 84 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

job. Lessons must be so simple that they can be 
accompHshed, and so mteresting that they awaken 
enthusiasm. In the second place, going too fast 
with children begets superficial habits and inaccurate 
knowledge. This is one of the sins laid at the door 
of the American school by European observers. We 
must therefore avoid the fault of undertaking too 
much as well as the fault of doing too little. Ac- 
cording to this study, the best results are obtained 
by schools which read in the several grades the 
amount indicated in the following table : — 

Average Amount read by the Best Schools 

(Unit = looo words) 
Grade ... 12345678 Total 
Amount . . 29 62 120 200 200 168 90 107 976 

7. Dramatization. — The possibilities of dramatiza- 
tion have only recently been realized to any consider- 
able extent by the elementary school. The main 
purpose of the exercise is to put meaning into words. 
Meaning consists of thought and feeling. The 
theatre is a very potent factor in human society. 
From the dramatic dance of the savage to the 
Shakespearean play we have an illustration of how 
man tries to realize and express the infinite variety 



J 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 185 

of human emotion, and the evolution of motive into 
action. The child's play is a "continuous perform- 
ance" in the theatrical sense. With such an in- 
stinct in possession of the infant soul, why should the 
school longer neglect to employ so useful an agent in 
the service of education ? 

Particularly useful is dramatization in a cosmo- 
politan city like New York, where the schools are 
crowded with foreigners and the children of foreign- 
ers. My own district is not known as a community 
of foreigners; yet ten per cent of our children are 
ItaUans, and possibly twenty-five per cent are He- 
brews of foreign parentage. The spoken and written 
symbols that are thrust upon children in such pro- 
fusion have in many cases little or no content. The 
teacher vainly imagines that words "mean what 
they say." This is never the case. Her words 
carry her mature experience. The books children 
read convey meaning packed into them by an adult 
writer. To the child, especially the child from a 
foreign or uncultured home, words have often but 
little significance. Convince yourself of this by 
asking a pupil to explain the meaning of words found 
in his books. One was asked to tell what were the 
" Oxford Provisions." He replied : " Salt, beef, ham, 



1 86 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

bacon." Another was told to explain what a city 
of refuge was for. He said : "When a man had been 
murdered accidentally, he might jump up and run 
to it." I picked out eight words at random from a 
page of Longfellow's "Miles Standish" which a class 
had read, and asked for their meaning. About one 
pupil in ten could answer. 

When children "act out" a story, the words give 
up their real meaning. This is true whether the sub- 
ject be a nursery rhyme, a fairy tale, a play, or an 
episode in history. I have been encouraging dra- 
matic exercises in my district for some time ; but these 
returns show a far more extensive use of them than I 
had suspected. Considerably more than half of all 
the classes have had dramatization. In one school, 
out of forty-seven teachers reporting, all but three 
have dramatized. Below will be found a selection of 
some of the pieces in each grade that have been 
dramatized in these schools. The report does not 
include the dramatic reading that is insisted on in the 
regular reading hour, nor does it include dramatic 
reading done by teacher or children in reading to the 
class. 

There is one serious danger against which a note of 
warning should be issued. The tendency in school 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 187 

dramatics is to become theatrical ; to put the empha- 
sis on showy effects; to dress children up in fancy 
costumes ; to exhibit them before the public. School 
work of any kind degenerates and loses its educational 
value as soon as it is used primarily for show purposes. 
This is true of dramatics no less than of other exer- 
cises. Therefore, keep the work simple. Confine it 
chiefly to the class room ; and remember that its 
primary purpose is to make vivid the meaning of 
what is read. 

From the reports submitted, the following selec- 
tion of pieces dramatized in the several grades is 
made. 

First Grade 

The Wind and the Sun ; The Fox and the Grapes ; 
The Three Goats ; Little Boy Blue ; The Three Bears ; 
The Three Little Pigs ; The Straw, the Coal, and the 
Bean ; The Butterfly ; The Organ Grinder ; The Hare 
and the Tortoise; The Dog and his Shadow; The 
Lion and the Mouse; The Thrifty Squirrels; Little 
Jack Horner; Henny Penny; Puss in Boots; The 
Dove and the Bee; Five Little Chickadees; Jonni- 
cake ; Old Mother Hubbard ; Lambikin ; Jack and 
Jill ; Simple Simon ; Tom Thumb ; The Beehive. 



1 88 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Second Grade 

The Wolf and the Seven Kids; Chicken Little; 
Jack and the Beanstalk ; The Little Red Hen ; Billy 
Binks; How Mrs. White Hen Helped Rose; Little 
Shepherdess ; Drowning of Mr. Leghorn ; Starving of 
Mrs. Leghorn; Little Red Riding Hood; Sleeping 
Apple; Three BiUy Goats Gruff; The Owl and the 
Grasshopper; The Pied Piper; The Elves and the 
Shoemaker ; The Boy who cried Wolf ; The Pigs and 
the Giant ; Little Gingerbread Boy ; Sleeping Beauty ; 
The Little Pine Tree; Washington and the Cherry 
Tree ; The Brahmin, the Tiger, and the Jackal ; Han- 
sel and Gretel ; Clytie; Little Match Girl. 

Third Grade 

Pinocchio ; The Magic Swan ; Hiawatha ; The Crow 
and the Pit'cher ; A; Visit from the Months ; What Mrs. 
Squirrel Thinks; The Ant and the Mouse; How to 
get Breakfast ; The Spider and the Fly ; Two Little 
Kittens ; The Blind Man and the Lame Man ; The 
Town Musicians; The Golden Touch; Cinderella; 
Tillie's Christmas ; The Captain's Daughter ; Pan- 
dora's Box ; The Leak in the Dike ; WiUiam Tell ; J 
The First Woodpecker; The Frog and the Ox; HowB 



A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF READING 189 

the World came to an End ; The Fisherman and His 
Wife. 

Fourth Grade 

The Honest Woodman ; The Town Mouse and the 
Country Mouse ; The Miller of the Dee ; The Bell of 
Atri ; Rip Van Winkle ; The Book of Thanks ; Supper 
at the Mill ; The Boy Who Tried ; The Brave Drum- 
mer Boy ; How Andy saved the Train ; The Emperor 
and the Abbot ; The Stolen Child ; The Cat and the 
Mouse as Partners; How Jack O'Lantern Fright- 
ened away the Indian; The Coming of Hudson; 
Settlement of Manhattan; Daniel Webster's First 
Case ; The Story of Joseph ; How I turned the Grind- 
stone. 

Fifth Grade 

The Fox and the Horse ; Christian and Apollyon ; 
Christmas at the Cratchits; The Buying of Man- 
hattan ; Selection from As You Like It ; Selection 
from A Midsummer-Night's Dream; Columbus; 
The Jackal and the Partridge; How the Thrushes 
crossed the Sea; Surrender of New Amsterdam; 
Saving of John Smith's Life by Pocahontas ; Salem 
Witchcraft; The Pilgrims; The Snake Skin and the 
Bullets; Braddock's Defeat. 



IQO THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

Sixth Grade 

King of the Golden River; Moses at the Fair; 
Departure of the Clermont; Horatius at the Bridge; 
Arnold the Traitor ; The Miraculous Pitcher ; Betsy 
Ross ; Nathan Hale ; Boston Massacre ; John Brown; 
Barbara Frietchie. 

Seventh Grade 
Christmas Carol ; Courtship of Miles Standish. 

Eighth Grade 

Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice; Evangeline; 
The Bird's Christmas Carol ; Lady of the Lake. 



CHAPTER VII 
A READING TEST 

The test is an indispensable part of teaching. 
Any effort or device which attempts to ascertain 
whether a pupil has done his work, or how well he has 
done it, is a test. It may be formal or informal. It 
may be a part of the recitation, or distinct from it. 
It may be applied by the teacher, the principal, or 
the superintendent. However, and whenever, and 
by whomsoever used, the test is necessary if standard 
and proficiency are to be secured and maintained. 
That modern doctrine of education which puts all 
the emphasis upon "process" and "effort" and 
"interest" and "good intentions" to the neglect of 
results is vicious and false and the bane of the pro- 
fession. 

Granted that reading should be tested, how is it to 
be done? Manifestly we shall have to divide the 
problem into several parts and consider each sepa- 
rately. We have already discussed reading as a me- 
chanical process and reading as Hterature. The 

191 



192 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

different standards to be applied to these two phases 
have also been explained under the head of "class 
criticism. " (See page 154.) 

I. Analysis of the Problem. — In New York City 
the board of superintendents requires, principals to 
rate the reading efficiency of pupils who are about to 
graduate from an elementary school under the follow- 
ing items : — 

(i) Amount of literature read in class during the 
year now closing. 

(2) Power to interpret the matter so read. 

(3) Ability to read aloud accurately and intelli- 

gently new reading matter. 

(4) Power to give understandingly the substance of 

a paragraph after a single reading. 

(5) Skill in the use of a dictionary. 

(i) Amount. — This heading calls for the quanti- 
tative measurement of reading as discussed in Chap- 
ter VI. 

In the high school tests of the Regents in New 
York and in college entrance tests, quantity is an 
important part of the examination. The student] 
must read a certain number of specified books and 
show that he has mastered their contents. The| 
reason for these demands is that reading is treate( 



A READING TEST 193 

chiefly as literature and only incidentally as a mode 
of expression. In secondary and higher institutions 
"elocution" is under the ban, and thought content is 
practically all there is of reading. 

(2) Interpretation. — Here is the first attempt to 
measure the power of the pupil. Again the demand 
is concerned with content. "Interpret" may, how- 
ever, be taken to mean intelligent vocal rendition. 
Sometimes the best interpretation of a poem or other 
literary masterpiece is adequate oral expression. 
But interpretation includes also explanation of words 
and phrases, of figures and allusions. A pupil must 
be reasonably proficient in this phase of reading be- 
fore he can be regarded satisfactory. 

(3) Reading Aloud. — I wonder whether tiiere is 
enough oral reading in the schools of aU grades. 
Young people sing, and play on musical instruments 
of various kinds, and dance, and play cards ; but how 
many are able to entertain a company by an accept- 
able reading or recitation? Elsewhere in this vol- 
ume reasons are given why silent reading alone is 
insufiicient to bring out all there is of meaning, 
especially meaning which consists of feeling. There- 
fore a reading test, to be adequate, must require vocal 
utterance. Only in this way may we know the 



194 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

quality of voice, the accuracy and effectiveness of 
pronunciation and enunciation. Only thus shall we 
discover errors due to bad habits and inherited de- 
fects of speech. 

The requirement of the board of superintendents 
not only calls for reading aloud, but specifies that the 
test shall be on new matter. In this way we deter- 
mine the pupil's power. We learn something of his 
skUl in pronunciation, of the extent of his vocabulary, 
and of the extent to which reading has become an 
efficient instrument for the acquisition of knowledge 
and pleasure. 

(4) The Abstract. — The next part of the test calls 
for the substance of a paragraph in the language of 
the pupil after a single reading. Here we have an 
entirely new point of view. The pupil no longer deals 
with individual words and sentences, but goes on to 
a larger unity, which he is obliged to grasp at a glance, 
and to express in condensed form. The making of 
abstracts is the very essence of what we call " study. " 
It is therefore exceedingly valuable. It is a sure cure 
for the abominable habit of memorizing the words 
of texts in history, geography, and other lessons. 
Pupils in all grades should be frequently required to 
'make oral abstracts of reading matter, — not merely 



A READING TEST 195 

of paragraphs, but of entire lessons. I sometimes ask 
a pupil in the upper grammar grades to give me the 
story of Evangeline, of Julius Caesar, or some other 
literary work in ten sentences. After the fourth 
year these abstracts should be written and may be 
assigned as home-work. Great pains should be 
taken to have the exercises abstracts rather than 
extracts. They should be brief. They should be 
carefully scrutinized by the teacher. In this way we 
shall have a guarantee that the pupil has studied 
his lesson; for it is impossible to write a good ab- 
stract without studying with care what is to be 
reduced in bulk. 

(5) The Dictionary Habit. — A part of the equip- 
ment to which every pupil above the fourth grade is 
entitled is a habit of going to the dictionary when a 
doubt arises as to the meaning or pronunciation of a 
word. Hence skill in the use of the dictionary is a 
proper subject of inquiry in a reading test. 

2. A High Standard. — Only the best reading is 
good enough for promotion ; therefore a high stand- 
ard of proficiency will be necessary. The writer 
has adopted in his district the standard of ninety per 
cent as a condition for a satisfactory rating of a class 
or school in reading. That is, ninety per cent of all 



196 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

the pupils examined must read with adequate fluency 
and expression the matter used for the test. 

Lowell has said of reading: "I should be half 
inclined to say that any reading is better than none, 
allaying the crudeness of the statement by the Yankee 
proverb, which teUs us that, though ' all deacons are 
good, there's odds on deacons.' " The truth of this 
dictum we may admit, but it does not follow that we 
shall be justified in promoting large numbers of chil- 
dren who are deficient in reading ; because if we do, 
these pupils will certainly come to grief sooner or later 
in their attempt to pass through the grades. Being 
unable to read with ease, they have difficulty in 
mastering their books, and thus they become dis- 
couraged and drop out of school. 

3. Every Pupil Tested. — A supervisor who aims 
to ascertain the efiiciency of a class in reading must 
apply his test to every pupil. A great deal of hum- 
bug is covered up by the opposite procedure. A su- 
perintendent may go into a class and ask the teacher 
to show how well the children can read. She calls 
upon John, and Mary, and Susan, and three or four 
others, all star pupils, and the superintendent rubs 
his hands, compliments the teacher, and goes away 
satisfied that reading is well taught in that class. If 



A READING TEST 197 

he had insisted upon hearing every member of the 
class, he might have discovered that fifty per cent 
could not read at all with any adequate degree of 
success ; and perhaps even the star pupils who per- 
formed so well were trained by aliother teacher or 
school. Every pupil should know what he is alleged 
to have been taught. We ask the teacher to name 
the pages or lessons that have been mastered by the 
class. From among the lessons thus indicated, the 
material for the test is taken. If the failures are 
more than ten per cent, the class is deficient in 
reading. 

Such a test brings home to a teacher two things she 
must never forget ; namely, first, that she is respon- 
sible for the progress of every pupil in her class ; and, 
secondly, that she must drill and drill and drill until 
what she has taught is a real and permanent posses- 
sion of the pupil. 

4. Relative Value of Reading. — English and num- 
ber are admittedly the most important subjects in 
the elementary curriculum. If a pupil be deficient 
in these two, he should not be promoted ; for he will 
be unable to do the work of the next grade. Read- 
ing is an important part of English. How much 
should it count in a scheme of promotion by points ? 



1 98 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

On the basis of a hundred, I would put the following 
valuation on mere ability to read with fluency and 
intelligence, leaving out of consideration spelling, 
memorizing, grammar, and composition: first year, 
20 points ; second to sixth years inclusive, 10 points ; 
seventh and eighth years, 5 points. 

The total value of English (including penmanship) 
in the elementary school for promotion purposes I 
should put at 45 points in all grades. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE HYGIENE OF READING 

I. Sufficient Light. — The first requisite for reading 
with ease and comfort is a sufficient amount of Hght 
from the right source. Authorities on school hy- 
giene unite in demanding that the amount of trans- 
parent glass surface admitting light shall be from 
one-fifth to one-fourth of the floor surface of the room. 
A standard schoolroom, 30 X 25 ft., should therefore 
contain not less than 150 sq. ft. of lighting surface. 
This should furnish to the pupil seated in the most 
unfavorable situation an illumination of at least 
fifty candle metres (that is, the light of fifty standard 
candles at a distance of one metre). Various devices 
may have to be resorted to in order to secure the 
proper diffusion of Hght, such as factory ribbed glass, 
Luxfer prisms, shades, etc. The source of light should 
be from the left, or left and rear. In spite of the dicta 
of the doctors, there are stiU many ill-lighted school- 
rooms. InteUigent teachers can do much to remedy 
these conditions by bringing them to the attention 
of responsible authorities. In most cases these 

199 



200 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

unhygienic rooms are in old buildings inherited by 
the present administration from a preceding genera- 
tion. Unless some one lodges a complaint, serious 
defects may continue indefinitely. 

But if schools fail in their duty in such things, 
Vhat shaU we say of the average home, where the 
pupil does his reading and studying ? Many parents 
are ignorant of the laws of hygiene, and others who 
know better are careless. And hence children are 
allowed to sit in dark corners to read and write and 
are never definitely instructed as to the proper direc- 
tion for the source of light. Recently the writer 
visited the home of a boy who attends one of the pub- 
lic high schools. The lad's desk is so situated that 
the gaslight falls over his right shoulder. In this 
unhygienic situation the boy has prepared all his 
home lessons since the day he was admitted to the 
primary school. A suggestion from a thoughtful 
teacher would have taught him early to change the 
position of his desk. 

A day or two ago a girl was observed in an elevated 
train on her way home from school. The car was 
crowded and poorly lighted. But the girl was doubled 
over, intent upon her home-work. Although she 
could scarcely see the figures she was writing, she 



THE HYGIENE OF READING 20I 

never took her eyes off the paper for an instant dur- 
ing the entire journey from Sixty-Seventh Street to 
Tremont. A girl old enough to attend the Normal 
College ought to have better instruction in personal 
hygiene. 

A contemplation of home conditions in the poor 
quarters of a city should warn teachers against the 
imposition of an unreasonable amount of home-work. 
In thousands of f amihes the entire household occupies 
a single hving-room, which may also be the kitchen 
and bedroom. I know of a case where a family of 
thirteen persons and four live chickens lived in one 
room. What chance has a child amid such surround- 
ings to do home-work requiring close attention ? To 
ameliorate the circumstances of such unfortunate 
children, study-rooms have been opened in some of 
our evening recreation centres, where children may 
do their home-work in comfort under the supervision 
of a teacher. Strange things are sometimes accident- 
ally discovered in study-rooms. One child was found 
recently whose home-work consisted of the writing 
of the following sentence one thousand times: "I 
must obey my teacher." School hygiene is in a 
primitive state as long as we find teachers who are 
guilty of such crimes against childhood. 



202 THE . PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

2. Tinge and Surface of Paper. — Black ink on 
white paper is the most effective combination for 
reading. No other contrast is so great as this. A 
flat, unreflecting surface is necessary for school books. 
Glossy paper reflects light regularly and is therefore 
injurious to the eye. In order to produce good half- 
tone illustrations, the publisher often uses calen- 
dered ^ paper for the entire book. Line drawings are 
more satisfactory than half-tones, because they may 
be printed on a dull surface ; but they are more expen- 
sive because they require the services of an artist. 
The use of calendered paper, therefore, is always in the 
interest of economy in printing, but not in reading. 

The writing on the school blackboard requires 
careful attention. After the writing has been erased 
with a board-rubber, small particles of chalk still 
cling to the surface and give it a gray color, thus 
reducing the contrast upon which the legibility of the 
writing depends. Therefore, at least once a day 
blackboards should be washed. The writing should 
be large enough to be clearly visible from the last row 
of seats. The reflection of light is usually such that 
from certain angles it is impossible to read the writing. 

1 Calender is a machine consisting of two cylinders between which 
paper is run to give it a smooth, glossy surface. 



THE HYGIENE OF READING 203 

In such cases matter to be read or copied should be 
placed where all the children can see it, or pupils 
should be asked to change their seats. I have exam- 
ined the eyes of a large number of school children, 
and have found scores of cases of defective vision, 
where the defect was unsuspected by either the pupil 
himself or by his parents and teachers. Many such 
unfortimates are seated by careless teachers in the 
rear of the room where they are unable to read what 
they are asked to copy, e.g., lists of spelling words, 
problems in arithmetic, and the like. In this way 
they learn wrong forms, or fail to understand what is 
explained ; then they fall behind in their studies, lose 
interest in school, and presently are known as "bad" 
boys or girls. 

So important is the proper use of the blackboard, 
that in the New York Training Schools the student 
receives special instruction and drill in the matter, 
and on the blank filled out by principals for the 
renewal of temporary licenses, "skiU in blackboard 
work" is one of the items reported on. The recent 
introduction of arm-movement writing in all the 
grades and schools of New York has enormously 
improved the blackboard writing of teachers, and 
has thus been a great boon to children. 



204 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

3. Illustrations. — Anything that helps 1;o make 
the meaning clear tends to reduce the time and effort 
required in reading. Illustrations, therefore, are an 
important phase of the hygiene of reading. School 
readers of the present leave little to be desired in the 
matter of pictures. Their pubhshers spend vast sums 
to secure artists of skill and reputation. The result 
is that the little ones look upon the best of these 
books with affectionate regard. Such an appeal to 
interest eliminates the drudgery from reading and 
doubles the efficiency of the teaching. 

School histories are illuminated by portraits of the 
principal actors in the drama, by facsimiles of im- 
portant documents, by hterary sources, by diagrams 
and maps. All these help to put meaning into the 
narrative and thus to reduce the labor required to 
master the content of the book. 

Illustrative material in geography has become very 
valuable. Text-books are filled with diagrams, maps, 
and pictures of landscape features, buildings, and 
people. The stereoscope, museum, excursion, and 
picture library all help to make the learning easy 
and effective. 

Even tables of contents and indexes are related to 
economy of reading. These give one a bird's-eye 



THE HYGIENE OF READING 205 

view of the contents of a book and enable one to turn 
with a minimum of effort to any desired portion of 
the text. Not only should every book be provided 
with one or both of these helps, but the teacher should 
make it a part of his business to train children in the 
proper use of them. Everywhere and always it is our 
duty to reduce the friction of the machine and thus 
to increase the available energy devoted to the educa- 
tional output. 

4. Length of Line. — On the proper length of line 
for rapidity and ease of reading there is considerable 
variation among authorities. The reason for this is 
that the question is one largely of opinion, no con- 
clusive experimentation having been made as yet. 
Weber ^ requires a maximum line of 150 mm. and a 
minimum of 100 mm. He recommends that school 
books be printed in lines of 140-150 mm., or nearly 
six inches. Cohn^ thinks a Hne should never- be 
more than 90-110 mm. (4.3 in.). Huey^ indorses 
Dearborn's demand for a Une of 75-80 mm., but gives 

1 A. Weber, Ueber die Augemmtersuckungen in den h'dhern Schulen zu 
Darmstadt. Referat und Memorial, erstattet der grossherzoge Ministerial = 
Ahtheilung fur Gestmdheitspflege. Marz, 1881. 

2 The Hygiene of the Eye, Hermann Cohn, Midland Educational Co., 
Birmingham, England, 1886, p. 206. 

^ The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, Edmund B. Huey, The 
Macmillan Co., 1908, p. 412. 



2o6 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

his own preference for 60-80 mm. The hews column 
of the New York Times is 57 mm. wide. The columns 
of the Outlook are 60 mm. in width; of Scribner's 
Magazine, the same ; of the Cosmopolitan, 64 mm. ; 
of McClure's Magazine, 66 mm. ; of the Atlantic 
Monthly, 59 mm. The average length of line in cer- 
tain well-known school readers extensively used in 
New York is as follows : — 

Primer A, part i, 32 mm. 

Primer A, part 2, 45.5 mm. 

Primer B, p. i, 67.5 mm. 

Primer B, p. 38, 63 mm. 

Primer C, 35-110 mm. 

Primer D, 30-65 mm. 

The following quotation from Dearborn ^ shows 
that many factors in the reading process are related 
to the length of line, and that the mere ipse dixit of 
an author is not sufficient as a guide to practice : — 

"The length of the text-lines is mainly important 
in its effect upon the formation of motor habits. The 
rate of reading depends in part on the ease with which 
a regular rhythmical movement is established. The 
pecuharities of this movement are, as noted, two, — 
a succession of the same number of pauses per line, 
and a distribution of the duration of the pauses. . . . 

' 1 op. cit., p. 131. 



THE HYGIENE OF READING 207 

Those lines are best suited to rapid reading which give 
opportunity for a wide span of attention, but which 
are not of such length that the peripheral perceptions 
from the end or beginning of a line are too inexact 
and confused to be of value in determining the general 
character of a large part of the line. If the lines are 
too long, the incidental concurrent impression of words 
lying in the lines above and below . . . are not in- 
frequently distracting. . . . Uniformity of length 
of line is a requisite for the formation of motor habits 
of reaction." 

On the score of uniformity of length, most of the 
primers in use offend. In many cases the lines are 
interrupted by illustrations, so that the little reader 
is much troubled to follow the devious path of the 
printed story. In Primer A the length is exceedingly 
irregular ; in Primer B the same is the case ; in Primer 
C the lines vary according to the length of the verses; 
while Primer D has a fairly regular length on any 
given page, but varies from 30 to 65 mm. in different 
parts of the book. 

The daily newspaper, having a column of about 
60 mm., is therefore the model for the length of hne 
of a school primer. The makers of newspapers have 
adapted themselves to the reaction of their readers ; 



2o8 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

while the pubHshers of books, in the interest of beauty 
or their own convenience, continue to disregard the 
standards of hygiene. Of the primers cited above, 
A's Hues are too short by half ; B's are right ; C's are 
too irregular ; and D's are too short in the beginning 
and just right at the end. 

5. Size of Type. — Huey^ quotes with approval 
the following requirements set down in Shaw's 
School Hygiene : ^ — 

For the first year the size of type should be at least 
2.6 mm. and the width of leading 4.5 mm., as shown m 
in this example : — 

Who has seen the Wind ? 

Neither I nor you. 
But when the leaves hang trembHng, 

The wind is passing through. 

Who has seen the wind ? 

Neither you nor I ; 
But when the trees bow down their 
headsj 

The wind is passing by. 

1 op. cit., p. 416. 

^School Hygiene, Edward R. Shaw, The Macmillan Co., 1901, p. 178. 



THE HYGIENE OF READING 209 

For the second and third years, the letters should 
not be smaller than 2 mm., with leading of 4 mm. 
Some of the more carefully made books for the second 
and third years are printed in letters of this size, as 
shown in the following example : — 

Where the bee sucks, there suck I ; 
In the cowslip's bell I lie; 
There I couch when owls do cry. 
On the bat's back I do fly- 
After summer merrily. 

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now. 
Under the blossom that hangs on the 
bough ! 

For the fourth year the letters should be at least 
1.8 mm., with leading 3.6 mm., as follows : — 

Oh, for boyhood's time of June, 
Crowding years in one brief moon, 
When all things I heard or saw. 
Me, their master, waited for. 
I was rich in flowers and trees, 
Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 
For my sport the squirrel played. 
Plied the snouted mole his spade. 



2IO THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

The primers already cited in this chapter have the 
following sizes of type and leading : — 

Size of Type in Five Primers 





Type 


Leading 




mm. 


mm. 


Primer A, pt. i . 


3-5 


7 


Primer A, pt. 2 . 


2.5 


5-7 


Primer B . . . 


3 


6 


Primer C . . . 


3-5 


7-5 


Primer D . . . 


3 


5 



From this table it appears that in size of type and 
width of spacing these books more than satisfy the 
minimum requirements of hygiene. But there are 
many school books in use which fall short of the stand- 
ards. A popular text-book on grammar, for in- 
stance, prints most of its reading matter in t3^e 1.55 
mm. in height, with 2.5 mm. spacing, while many] 
subordinate paragraphs have i mm. letters and 2! 
mm. spacing. A well-known book on school hy- 
giene prints its index in i mm. type, with 1.5 mm. 
spacing. A certain pedagogical magazine recently] 
started is printed on calendered paper throughout, 
withi.5mm. type for the major portionand i mm. type^ 
for the rest. It is evident that the only way to safe- 
guard the eyes of children is for boards of education] 
to exclude from the schools every book that fails to | 



THE HYGIENE OF READING 211 

comply with the standards of hygiene. " In future," 
says Cohn, "I would have all school authorities, 
with measuring rule in hand, place upon the Index 
librorum prohibitorum all school books which do not 
conform to the following measurements : The height 
of the smallest n must be at least 1.5 mm., the least 
width between the lines must be 2.5 mm., the least 
thickness of the n must be .25 mm., the shortest dis- 
tance between the letters .75 mm., the greatest length 
of text-line 100 mm., and the number of letters on a 
line must not exceed 60." ^ 

6. Eye-strain. — An act of vision is a very compli- 
cated psychological and physiological process. The 
crystalline lens is an elastic body, and would, if left 
to itself, assume a shape more nearly spherical than 
the one it actually has in the normal eye. There is a 
muscle attached to the margin of the lens called the 
zonula, which, by contracting, keeps the lens flattened 
for seeing distant objects. The tension of the zonula 
is diminished by the ciliary or accommodation muscle. 
The lens, being elastic, assumes a more spherical form 
whenever the ciliary muscle contracts, and thus en- 
ables the eye to view objects that are near. It is 
evident, then, that in reading and writing the ciliary 
muscle is kept tense aU the while ; consequently, when 

\0p. cit., p. 206. 



212 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 




one engages in these exercises for many consecutive 
hours, the muscle becomes exhausted and we have the 
condition known as eye-strain. This mechanism of 
accommodation is the main source of injury to the 

youthful eye. In 
Fig. lo, a section of 
the eye is shown 
with the lens accom- 
modated for near 
vision in the upper 
half and for far 
vision in the lower 
half. 

(i) Diseases of the 
Eye. — Rays of light 
faUing upon the eye 
in repose, without any exertion of the accom- 
modation muscle, are normally refracted so as 
to be focussed exactly upon the retina. The eye 
is then said to be emmetropic (emmetros = of the right 
measure ; ops = the eye). If the diameter of the eye 
is too short, so that the rays are focussed behind the 
retina, the case is called hypermetropic or hyperopic 
(hyper = beyond). If the diameter of the eye is too 
long, so that the rays are focussed in front of the retina, 



iei Nahblick — *^for near sight** 
bei Fgmblkk—**/or/ar sight*** 

Fig. lo. 
From Cohn's The Hygiene of the Eye. 



THE HYGIENE OF READING 



213 



then the patient is myopic {muein = to blink). Both 
these diseases may be caused either by defects of refrac- 
tion or defects in the shape of the eye. There is a 
third disease due to imperfect refraction called astig- 
matism. In this case the focus is on the retina, but 
is in the form of a line instead of a point. The most 
important of these troubles, so far as the schools are 
concerned, is myopia, both because it is a disease in- 
duced by too close and too long application to school 
work (possibly insufficient light), and because "a 
short-sighted eye is a diseased eye ; . . . progressive 
short sight is in every case ominous of evil for the 
future; . . . and not unf requently at the age of 50 
or 60, if not much earlier, the power of sight, either 
from detachment of the retina, or from hemorrhage, 
or lastly, from atrophy and degeneration of the 
yellow spot, is irretrievably lost." ^ 

What is meant by calling myopia a "school dis- 
ease" is shown by the following table giving the fre- 
quency of myopia among 10,060 pupils in the several 
kinds of schools in which they were registered : — 

"5 village schools 1.4 per cent 

20 elementary schools 6.7 per cent 

2 higher schools for girls . . . 7.7 per cent 

^ Quoted from Bonders by H. Cohn, The Hygiene of ike Eye, p. 49. 



214 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

2 middle schools ...... 10.3 per cent 

2 real schools . 19.7 per cent 

2 gymnasia 26.2"^ per cent 

(2) The School Doctor. — In 1908 Gulick and Ayres 
reported 70 cities in the United States outside of 
Massachusetts in which medical inspection of schools 
is provided. In Massachusetts there were at that 
time 32 cities and 321 towns where such inspection 
was in operation.^ Practically every nation of 
Europe has put into operation some form of inspec- 
tion; and even Chile and the Argentine Republic 
have laws requiring physicians to visit the schools. 
The Japanese system of medical inspection extends all 
over the empire and reaches the most remote rural 
community. By reason of the general adoption of 
this beneficent reform and the great improvement in 
school architecture, the teacher is relieved of some 
of his responsibility in the matter of school hygiene. 
In New York, for instance, the doctor systematically 
examines at least a portion of the children in each 
school once a year ; and the medical records are en- 
tered upon the pupil's card, which in case of transfer 
he carries from school to school. When the doctor 

^ Cohn, op. cit., p. 57. 

2 Medical Inspection of Schools, Guiick and Ayres, N. Y. Charities 
Publication Committee, 1908, p. 27. 



TFIE HYGIENE OF READING 215 

discovers a defect of vision, the pupil receives an offi- 
cial notice to his parents ; and the school nurse follows 
up the case until the child has glasses or such other 
treatment as may be required. In spite of all these 
agencies, however, one still may see, in almost any 
class, myopic children. So it is necessary to keep on 
urging teachers, as all works on school hygiene do 
urge, to watch the eyes of their children. Near-sight 
can easily be detected by merely watching a child 
while he reads or writes. Other defects will be re- 
vealed by Snellen's type test, with which every teacher 
should be familiar. As soon as a difficulty is dis- 
covered, the parents should be notified ; for delay not 
only may interfere with a child's progress, but may 
be dangerous. 

(3) Home-study. — Many teachers overestimate 
the value of home-study. Herbart said long ago, 
"The teacher who assigns home-work with a view to 
saving labor in school miscalculates utterly ; his work 
will soon have become all the harder." The princi- 
pal reason for home-study, as I see it, is that the pupil 
is trained thereby in self-dependence. Home-study 
also teaches children the virtue of industry and appli- 
cation. A certain teacher known to the writer as- 
signed twenty-eight map questions from a well-known 



2i6 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

geography for a home lesson. One of the questions 
was, "What is the most northern point of the 
European mainland ? " A little girl in the class was 
puzzled by this question because she had been so 
poorly instructed that she did not know proximity 
to the north pole is determined partly by parallels of 
latitude on the map. She therefore examined all 
the points near the top of the map, but could not 
find a name attached to any of the points. She 
appealed to her mother, and learned for the first time 
that you must follow lines of latitude in order to an- 
swer the given question. She then discovered her- 
self that North Cape is the point referred to. In 
numberless cases children ruin their eyes and break 
their little hearts in a vain effort to study unreason- 
able home lessons. 

All home-work should be forbidden during the 
first three years of school. Home-work in arith- 
metic and grammar should be forbidden below the 
sixth year. The maximum time for home-study 
should be as follows : fourth and fifth years, half an 
hour; sixth year, one hour; seventh and eighth years, 
one and a half hours; high school, two hours. 

7. Literary Style. — It is evident that ease and 
rapidity of reading are dependent to no small degree 



THE HYGIENE OF READING 



217 



upon the choice and arrangement of words. Hence 
the hygiene of reading is related to hterary style. 
Scientific writers are among the chief offenders in 
creating needless difficulties for the reader. They 
are so much engrossed by their facts and theories 
that they take no time to cultivate the art of expres- 
sion. Dr. Minot of Harvard does not overstate the 
case in the following paragraph: "Do we not all 
know articles which are bungled in form and weak- 
ened by prolixity ? Surely the heads of all labora- 
tories should insist by example and precept that all 
the workers under their influence write clearly and 
briefly — for if an author fails to show respect for 
his own scientific work, how can he expect others to 
respect it ? . . . Rivarol in his famous prize essay 
said, 'ce que n'est pas clair, n'est pas Frangais' — but 
we might say what is not true, is not English. By its 
wealth of synonyms and its logical construction the 
English language is preeminently adapted to the exact 

statement of scientific truth Good thinking is the 

blastema of good style, therefore our learning will never 
appear good if our learned articles are written badly." ^ 

1 Charles Sedgwick Minot, Vice-presidential Address delivered before 
the Section of Physiology and Experimental Medicine of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, at Minneapolis, December 
29, 1910. Published in Science, 191 1. 



2i8 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

In his essay on "The Philosophy of Style," Her- 
bert Spencer lays down the principle that the rules 
of rhetoric are merely so many devires for "econo- 
mizing the reader's or hearer's attention." "When 
we condemn writing that is wordy," he says, "or 
confused, or intricate — when we praise this style as 
easy, and blame that as fatiguing, we consciously or 
unconsciously assume this desideratum as our stand- 
ard of judgment. Regarding language as an apparatus 
of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say 
that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple 
and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be 
the effect produced. In either case, whatever force 
is absorbed by the machine is deducted from the 
result. . . . The more time and attention it takes to 
receive and understand each sentence, the less time 
and attention can be given to the contained idea ; 
and the less vividly will that idea be conceived." ^ 

A large percentage of school books are written in 
an obscure or difficult style that acts as a hindrance 
to thought rather than an instrument of it. It is 
well known that in the last two years of our elemen- 
tary school, children prefer Shakespeare to any 

^Philosophy of Style, by Herbert Spencer, N. Y., D. Appleton & 
Co., 1895, P- !!• 



THE HYGIENE OF READING 



219 



paraphrase of him. Mathematical problems are 
frequently enigmas merely because the child does 
not comprehend the language in which the problems 
are stated. School histories befuddle the child's 
brain by an obscure style of writing. The following 
paragraph is taken from a well-known history 
written for children from ten to fourteen years of 
age: "The blockade was now so effectual that the 
prices of all imported goods in the Confederate States 
were fabulous. Led by the enormous profits of a 
successful voyage, foreign merchants were con- 
stantly seeking to run the gantlet. Their swift 
steamers, making no smoke, long, narrow, low, and of 
a mud color, occasionally escaped the vigilance of the 
Federal squadron." This is a style that an adult 
might use in addressing mature and well-bred people. 
But the average pupil of the fifth grade will get very 
little content from "fabulous prices," "running the 
gantlet," and "the vigilance of the Federal squadron." 
Other illustrations of difficult and easy writing 
will readily occur to the reader. Here are two 

specimens : — 

Difficult 

"The Hollander still displays this naivete in the 
expression of his feelings, though almost always, too, 



220 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

he exhibits a curious, deep reserve, thinking more 
than he says (though he can be frank enough), as we 
often discover by the Kghtning illumination of a 
remark blurted out in passion. See how he expresses 
his ideal in naming his house to-day, showing exactly 
how much, chiefly of comfort, it means for him. 
His are not the regrets of an exile, such as carry our 
own suburban householder back with some longing to 
his childhood, when he names one house of a row 
in a Brixton or Stoke Newington street 'Tiverton,' 
' Dunkeld,' ' KiUiecrankie. ' " ' 

Easy 

"And every year he became more beautiful to look 
at, so that all those who dwelt in the village were 
filled with wonder, for, while they were swarthy and 
black-haired, he was white and delicate as sawn 
ivory, and his curls were like the rings of the daffodil. 
His lips, also, were like the petals of a red flower, and 
his eyes were like violets by a river of pure water, 
and his body like the narcissus of a field where the 
mower comes not." ^ 

1 Home Life in Holland, by D. S. Meldrum, The Macmillan Co., N. Y., 
i9ii,p. 13. 

2 The Star Child, by Oscar Wilde, Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Me. 



CHAPTER IX 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following authorities are cited or quoted in the text 
of this volume: — 

1. Arnold, Sarah Louise, Learning to Read, Silver, Bur- 
dett & Co., 1899. 

2. Bain, Alexander, The Senses and the Intellect, 4th ed. 

3. Baker, Thomas O., The Action Primer, American 
Book Co. 

4. Bagley, W. C, The Educative Process, The Macmillan 
Co., 1905. 

5. Barnes, Earl, Studies in Education, 1896, p. 15. 

6. Bryant, Sara Cone, Eow to Tell Stories to Children, 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

7. Stories to Tell to Children, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 1907, 

8. Burk, Frederic, in Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 6, p. 5, 
on Physical Basis of Association. 

9. Carpenter, Bakjer and Scott, The Teaching oj English, 
Longmans, Green, & Co., 1903. 

10. Chubb, Percival, The Teaching of English, The Mac- 
millan Co., 1909. 



222 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

11. Clark, S. H., How to Read Aloud, published by the 
author, Chicago University, 1897. 

12. How to Teach Reading in the Public Schools, Scott, 

Foresman & Co., Chicago, 1898. 

13. CoHN, Hermann, The Hygiene of the Eye, Midland 
Educational Co., London and Birmingham, 1886. 

14. CoLViN, S. ^. , The Learning Process,Th&lAsiCrDi\\dji Co., 

1911. 

15. Corson, Hiram, The Aims of Literary Study, The 
, Macmillan Co., 1895. 

16. Dearborn, Walter F., The Psychology of Reading, The 

Science Press, N. Y., 1906. 

17. Dexter and Garlick, Psychology in the Schoolroom, 

Longmans, Green, & Co., 1898. 

18. Dewy, John, The School and Society, University of 

Chicago Press, 1899. 

19. Dodge, Raymond, Visual Perception during Eye Move- 
ment, Psychological Review, Vol. 7, p. 456. 

20. Fulton and Trueblood, Practical Elements of Elocu- 
tion, Ginn & Co., Boston. 

21. GuLiCK AND Ayres, Medical Inspection of Schools, N. Y. 
Charities Publication Committee, 1908. 

22. Hall, G. Stanley, How to Teach Reading, D. C. 
Heath & Co., 1886. 

23. Hinshelwood, Professor, in Lancet, February 8, 1902, 
Aphasia. 

24. Hornbye, Horn-Book, London, 1622. 

25. Huey, Edmund B., The Psychology and Pedagogy of 

Reading, The Macmillan Co., 1908. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



223 



26. Huxley, Thomas, Man's Place in Nature. 

27. James, William, The Principles of Psychology, Holt & 

Co., 1893, Vol. I, p. 5S4. 

28. JuDD, Charles H., Genetic Psychology for Teachers, 
D. Appleton & Co., 1903. 

29. KiRKPATRiCK, E. A., on Children's Reading, in The 

Northwestern Monthly, Dec, 1898, and Jan. and Mar., 
1899, Lincoln, Neb. 

30. Fundamentals of Child Study, The Macmillan 

Co., 1903. 

31. Ladd and Woodworth, Elements of Physiological Psy- 

chology, Scribner's Sons, 1911. 

32. Ladd, George Trumbull, Elements of Physiological 

Psychology, Scribner's Sons, 1901. 

33. MacEwen, Sir William, in British Medical Journal, 

Vol. 2, 1888, on Aphasia. 

34. McMuRRY, Charles, Special Method in Reading for 
the Grades, The Macmillan Co., 1908. 

35. Special Method in the Reading of English Classics, 

The Macmillan Co., 1903. 

36. Meldrum, D. S., Home Life in Holland, The Macmillan 
Co., 1911. 

37. Miller, Hugh, My Schools and Schoolmates. 

38. Milton, John, Tractate on Education. 

39. MiNOT, Charles Sedgwick, Vice-Presidential Address, 
Science, 191 1. 

40. O'Shea, M. v.. Linguistic Development and Education, 
The Macmillan Co., 1907. 

41. Reeder, R. R., Historical Development of School 



224 THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACfflNG READING 

Readers and of Method in Teaching Reading, Columbia 
University Contributions to Philosophy, Psychology, and 
Education, Vol. 8, no. 2, The Macmillan Co., 1900. 

42. RiBOT, Th., The Evolution of General Ideas, The Open 

Court Publishing Co., 1899. 

43. Romanes, George J., Mental Evolution in Animals, 
D. Appleton & Co., 1893. 

44. Shaw, Edward R., School Hygiene, The Macmillan 

Co., 1901. 

45. Shimer, Edgar Dubs, The Progressive Road to Reading, 
Teachers' Manual, Silver, Burdett & Co., 1909, by Dr. 
Edgar Dubs Shimer, Dr. William L. Ettinger, and 
Georgine Bur chill. 

46. Smith, T. S., American Journal of Psychology, July, 

1896. 

47. Smythe, E. Louise, Old Time Stories, Werner & Co., 

Chicago, 1896. 

48. Spencer, Herbert, Philosophy of Style, D. Appleton 
& Co., N. Y., 1895. 

49. Stebbins, Genevieve, Delsarte System of Expression, 
N. Y., 1889. 

50. Stout, G. F., Manual of Psychology, Hinds & Noble, 
N. Y., 1899. 

51. Thomson, W. Hanna, Brain and Personality, Dodd, 

Mead & Co., 1907. 

52. Tracy, Frederick, The Psychology of Childhood, D. C. 
Heath & Co., 1896. 

53. VosTROVSKY, Clara, Study of Children's Reading Tastes, 

Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 6, p. 523. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 225 

54. A Study of Children's Stories in Studies in Edu- 
cation, by Earl Barnes, 1896, p. 15. 

55. Weber, A., Ueber die Augenuntersuchungen in der 
hoheren Schulen zu Darmstadt. Referat und Memorial, 
erstatted der grossherzoge Ministerial-Abtheilung filr 
Gesundheitspflege, Marz, 1881. 

56. Wharton, William Parker, Experimental Study of 
Ideational Types, Thesis for Doctorate in Philosophy, 
New York University, 1911. 

57. WissLER, Clark, Interests of Children in Reading, 
Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 5, p. 523. 

58. Wilde, Oscar, The Star Child, Thomas B. Mosher, Port- 
land, Me. 

59. Intentions, Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Me., 

1904. 

60. Wyche, Richard Thomas, Some Great Stories and How 
to Tell Them, Newson & Co., N. Y., 1910. 



CHAPTER X 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. (a) Describe three kinds of exercises which 
should be used in teaching children to read before a 
reading book is placed into their hands. Give a psy- 
chological reason for each exercise. 

(b) Give, with reasons, specific cautions regarding 
the use of phonic work in the first half year. 

2. (a) Describe what you regard as a good pho- 
netic method of teaching reading. Give a reason for 
each feature of the method described. 

(b) Describe and criticise the reading material 
found in some first reader now in use. Mention the 
book. 

3. "The owls were talking to each other. They 
were talking in their native language and laughing at 
each other. 

" Hiawatha heard the hooting of the owls and he 
was afraid. ' What is that ? ' he cried in terror. 

"Nokomis laughed and said, 'That is but the owl 
and the owlet in the pine trees. They are talking 

226 



TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 227 

to each other in their native language. The old owl 
is scolding, and the owlet is laughing at the moon.' " 
Assuming that the italicized words have not oc- 
curred previously in the reading of the class, how 
would you lead children in the second year of school, 
{a) to pronounce and to recognize these words; 
Q)) to understand their meaning ? 

4. Describe, in detail, proper methods of correcting 
these habitual faults in pronunciation : {a) dem for 
them; (b) wite for white. 

5. {a) Give ten phonetic elements that should be 
taught early in the first year of school. Give three 
considerations governing your choice. 

(6) Outline in three steps an exercise on the pho- 
nogram in. 

6. (a) In a second-year class, what preparation 
should be made for the reading of the poem printed 
on page 131 (mention three particulars) ? 

(h) Suggest three aids, aside from repetition, in 
the memorizing of this song. 

(c) In an eighth-year class, what points with re- 
gard to the versification of this song may properly 
be developed? 

7. Give in detail an exercise, suitable for the first 
year, on the sound "sk," giving in parallel columns, 



228 PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

{a) what the teacher is to do, and (6) what the pupils 
are to do. 

8. It has been proposed that in teaching beginners 
to read, the teacher should begin by using the fol- 
lowing sentence : "Three little pigs went for a walk." 
Criticise this procedure, giving reasons. 

9. {a) State, with reasons, the principles that 
should guide you in selecting the words to be taught 
to a class of beginners in reading. 

{h) State, with reasons, your method of teaching 
these words. 

(c) Name, with reasons, the letters whose sounds 
you should teach first, and describe your method of 
teaching these sounds. 

10. {a) Regarding a course of lessons in reading, 
in one of the early years of the elementary school, 
briefly indicate, with illustrations, two effective ways 
of leading pupils to understand the meaning of new 
words. 

(6) What considerations would guide you in 
selecting passages to be memorized, and how would 
you lead pupils to commit to memory such passages ? 

(c) Give four directions, such as might be helpful 
to a young teacher, for guiding pupils to read with 
proper expression. 



TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 



229 



(d) State in detail what manual work you deem it 
profitable to introduce in connection with the study 
of some specified selection. 

11. Describe in outline a reading lesson in the third 
or the seventh year of the elementary school, giving 
reasons for each exercise, and indicating practicable 
correlations with other subjects. 

12. How may children in a sixth-year grade be 
taught the meaning of new words? Mention a 
variety of ways and tell, with reasons, under what 
circumstances each way may properly be used. 
Illustrate. 

13. With regard to methods of teaching the mean- 
ing and use of words in the seventh and eighth years, 
state under five heads the points that should be 
brought out in a conference of the teachers of the 
grades mentioned. Illustrate. 

14. Treating each word separately, tell how you 
would impress on pupils the spelling of the follow- 
ing words : separate, business, led, benefited, pronun- 
ciation. 

15. {a) Describe and illustrate two ways in which 
a teacher may properly lead the children in grade 3A 
to understand the meaning of new words. (In illus- 
trating use two kinds or types of words.) 



230 PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING READING 

(b) State in general what words should be selected 
for such study. 

16. (a) State the principles which should guide a 
teacher in selecting words for a spelling list. 

(b) How should homonyms be taught? Illus- 
trate. 

(c) How would you lead children to discriminate 
between the words hope, expect, suppose? 

17. Show the grade to which each of the following 
is adapted and the particular purpose that each serves: 
Grimm's "Fairy Tales"; Arnold's "Sohrab and 
Rustum" ; Alcott's "Little Women" ; Pyle's "Story 
of King Arthur and His Knights" ; Ruskin's "King 
of the Golden River"; Stevenson's "The Wind"; 
Eggleston's "Stories of Great Americans." 

18. What is the main purpose of (i) oral reading ? 
(2) silent reading ? 

19. What are the essential characteristics of sup- 
plementary reading for the primary grades ? 

20. What is the purpose of emphasis ? Give two 
methods of emphasis. 

21. What relation does a child's experience or 
environment bear to his ability to read a given 
selection ? Illustrate by means of some well-known 
selection. 



TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 



231 



22. Discuss the value of calling on a child to give 
in his own words the thought of a passage that has 
just been read. 

23. Mark with proper diacritics: caprice, rough, 
legal, desert (verb), furlough. 

24. Contrast analytic and synthetic methods of 
teaching a child to read. Illustrate. 

25. Show in what respects learning to speak and 
learning to read are alike, and wherein the two are 
unlike. 

26. Discuss the question of lip movement in read- 
ing, giving your opinion, with reasons, as to its value 
or hindrance. 

27. Show the value of dramatization as a school 
exercise, and point out some of its dangers. 

28. Are diacritical marks desirable or necessary 
in the beginnings of reading ? Give reasons. 

29. Give an outline of the principal topics properly 
treated under the head of the hygiene of reading. 

30. What is the educational value of reading as a 
school subject ? Specify its several functions. 

31. Discuss the relation and relative value of 
impression and expression in education. 

32. What is the significance of gesture in relation 
to human speech ? Illustrate. 



1 



232 PRINCIPLES OF TEACfflNG READING 

33. Define and give the use of hornbook, sampler, 
battledore, in connection with reading. 

34. Characterize in detail a good reading lesson in 
a second-year grade. 

35. Explain a good method of stimulating interest 
in good but difficult subject-matter in a fourth-year 
class. 

36. Discuss the value of reading to children in 
lower and higher grades. 

37. What is the value of story-telling in the pri- 
mary grades ? Specify some of the qualities of a well- 
told story. 



INDEX 



Abell, Adelaide M., 66. 
Abstract of reading, 194. 
Accommodation in vision, 212. 
Adaptations of reading matter, 

. 97- . . 
Aim, definite, in reading, 140. 
Alexia, 42. 

Allusions, teaching of, 138. 
Alphabet, our, 81. 
Alphabetic method, 115. 

forbidden in Prussia, 117. 
Amount read, by pupils, 171, 192. 

to pupils, 178. 

by best schools, 184. 
Analysis, of reading test, 192. 

of words, 78. 
Analytic method of reading, 118. 
Aphasias, 40-55. 

motor, 42. 
Apraxias, 43. 
Arabs, their gestures, 4. 
Arnold, Sarah Louise, 83. 
Association, laws of, 16-20. 

reading a form of, 14. 

voluntary, 20. 

physical basis of, 38. 
Astigmatism, 213. 
Asymbolia, 49. 

Babbling stage of language, 5-7. 
Bagley, W. C, 30. 
Bain, Alexander, 45. 
Baker, Thomas O., 71. 
Barnes, Earl, 87. 
Basedow, 116. 
Battledore, 113. 
Beginnings of reading, 120. 
a device for, 127. 



Blackboard reading, 203. 
Blend, the, 83, 121, 126. 
Books used in reading, by chil- 
dren, 172. 
to children, 178. 
Booth, Edwin, 146. 
Brain, function, localization of, 
40. 
how a word gets recorded on, 

47. 
Broca's Convolution, 43, 48, 55. 
Browning, Incident of the 

French Camp, 144. 
Brumbaugh, Martin G., 82. 
Bryant, Sara Cone, 163. 
Buno, 116. 
Burk, Frederic, 39. 

Calendered paper, 202. 
Carpenter, Baker, and Scott, 

143, 144- 
Cattell, Dr. J. McKeen, viii. 
Chattering stage of language, 8. 
Children, kind of words used 

by them, 9. 
number of words used by 

them, II. 
Chubb, Percival, ' 94, 98, 99, 

104, 134, 140, 141, 150, 164. 
Ciliary muscle, 211. 
Clark, S. H., 148, 150. 
Climax, 154. 
Cohn, Hermann, 205, 211, 212, 

213, 214. 
College entrance board, 108. 

requirements, 105. 
Colvin, S. S., 29, 30. 
Comenius, 117, 119. 



233 



234 



INDEX 



Congruity, 19. 

Content, method of imparting, 

128. 
Contrast, 154. 
Corson, Hiram, 145. 
Criticism of class reading, 154, 

157- 

Dearborn, Walter F., viii, 59-62, 

205-206. 
Definitions of reading terms, 

120. 
Delsarte, system of expression, 4. 
Device for beginners in reading, 

127. 
Dewey, John, i, 32. 
Dexter and Garlick, 14, 17. 
Diacritical marks, 81. 
Dictionary habit, 195. 
Diseases of the eye, 212. 
Doctor, the school, 214. 
Dodge, Raymond, 61. 

Ear, literature for the, 143. 

Economy, mental, in silent read- 
ing, 28. 

Education, half-brained, 56. 

Educational Review, viii. 

Ehot, Charles W., 100. 

Emerson, R. W., The Moun- 
tain and the Squirrel, 131. 

Emmetropic, 212. 

Emotion in reading, 153. 

Emotional stage of language, 2. 

Emphasis, 152. 

Ends of reading, 77. 

Errors, correcting, 126, 154, 157. 

Expression, 141. 

and impression, 129. 

Expressive impulse, i. 

Eye-movements in reading, 60- 
65- 

Figures of speech, teaching of, 
138. 



Fiske, Thomas S., 108. 
Fissure of Rolando, 40. 

of Sylvius, 40. 
Frenchmen, their gestures, 4. 
Frequency, in association, 18. 
Fulton and Trueblood, 148. 

Gesture, importance of, 3. 

Goethe, 31. 

Grammar, figures, and allusions, 

138. 
Grouping, as an element in 

reading, 151. 
Gidick and Ayres, 214. 

Hall, G. Stanley, 86, 95-98, 115- 
116, 130. 

Harris, Benjamin, and the New 
England Primer, 100. 

Henry VHI, primer, no. 

High school reading, 105, 149. 

Hinshelwood, Professor, 49. 

History of reading, 109, 120. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Cham- 
bered NautUus, 138. 
Old Ironsides, 143. 

Home study, 215. 

Horn-book, 113. 

Hornbye's horn-book, 113. 

Huey, Edmund B., 25, 59, 62, 
66, 67, 68, 205. 

Huxley, Thomas, 13. 

Hypermetropic, 212. 

Ickelsamer, 109, 116. 
Ideational types, 30. 
Illustration of the process of 
learning to read, 21. 

influence of Comenius, 119. 

in relation to hygiene, 204. 
Imitative impulse, i. 
Impression and expression, 129. 

total, in reading, 135. 
Information, reading for, loi. 
Inspiration, reading for, 102. 



INDEX 



23s 



Institutes of Oratory, Quintilian, 

117. 
Interpretation, as an element in 

reading, 193. 
Interest in reading, 19, 87, 89, 

92, 93- 

Jacotot, 118. 
James, William, 15. 
Judd, Charles H., 64. 

K.'s diary, 6-1 1. 
Kirkpatrick, E. A., 8, 11, 12, 90, 
91. 

Ladd and Woodworth, viii, 43, 

48, 49, 54, S5, 56, 58. 
Language, comprehension pre- 
cedes use, 6. 
stages of, 2. 
visual, 12. 
Laws of association, 18. 
Left-and-right-handedness, 53- 

55- 
Letters recognized in groups, 

62-64. 
Light, sufficient, in reading, 199. 
Line, length of, 205. 
Lip-movers in reading, 34, 35, 

66, 67. 
Literary style in relation to 

hygiene, 216. 
Literature for the ear, 143-145. 

reading as, 103. 
Localization of brain function, 

40. 
Longfellow, The Arrow and the 

Song, 160. 
Lucy Gray, 132. 
Lyrics, how to teach, 130. 

MacDougall, Robert, viii, 35. 
MacEwen, Sir William, 51, 52. 
Machines, reading, 119. 
MaUery, on gesture, 5. 



Material, reading, history of, 

109. 
Meaning of words, 51, 66-68, 

84. 
Meldrum, D. S., 220. 
Memorizing, 159. 
Mental economy in sUent read- 
ing, 28. 
Methods of teaching reading, 
109-163. 

history of,; 109-120. 

A-B-C, 115. 

phonic, 116. 

word-building, 117. 

write-read, 117. 

analytic, 118. 

imparting content, 128. 
Miller, Cyrus C, 114. 
Miller, Hugh, 102. 
Milton, John, 96, 141. 
Minot, Charles S., 217. 
Moimtain, The, and the Squirrel, 

131- 

Muscular movements in read- 
ing, 59- 

Myopia, a school disease, 213. 

New England Primer, no. 

Orbis Pictus, illustrated school 

book, 119. 
O'Shea, M. V., 25, 33, 34. 

Paper, tinge and surface, 202. 
Pestalozzi, 117. 
Phonetic analysis, 78, 81. 

synthesis, 83. 

reading, 121. 

word, 121. 
Phonic and phonetic, 1 20. 
Phonogram defined, 121. 
Physical basis of association, 
38. 

of a word, 44. 

of the meaning of words, 51. 



236 



INDEX 



Physiology of reading, 38-69, 

73-76. 
Plato, describes write-read 

method, 117. 
Play impulse, 2. 
Poetry, lyric, 130. 
narrative, 131. 
Posture in reading, 68. 
Primary reading, mechanics of, 

77- 
as literature, 85. 
lyrics, 130. 

narrative poems, 131. 
Primer, the New England, no, 

III. 
Primers, length of line, 206. 

size of tjrpe, 210. 
Principles of reading, 70-76. 
Print or script in the beginning, 

80. _ 
Pronunciation, 81. 
Psychology of reading, 1-37, 

.70-73. _ 
PupUs, reading to, 158. 

Quality, quantity, and time, 180. 
Quantitative study of reading, 

Quintilian, describes write-read 
method, 117. 

Rapidity in reading, 33. 
Ratichius, 117. 

Reading teacher, successful, a 
rare treasure, v. 

psychology of, i. 

signs of, 14, 15. 

a form of association, 14, 16-20. 

illustration of the process, 21- 

silent, 25. 

mental economy in, 28. 
from printed to spoken word, 
thence to idea, 30. . 



as self-expression, 32. 

rapidity in, 33. 

lip-movers in, 59. 

muscular movements in, 59. 

eye-movements in, 60-65. 

posture in, 68. 

end of, 77. 

twofold aspect of, 78. 

relation to other studies, 78. 

primary, mechanics of, 77. 

primary, as literature, 85. 

what? 85, 104. 

sex differences in, 88, 90. 

grammar, mechanics of, 99. 

supplementary, 100. 

grammar, as literature, 103. 

for college entrance, 105. 

history of material, 109. 

machines, 119. 

beginnings of, 120, 127. 

content, methods of impart- 
ing, 128. 

impression and expression, 1 29. 

total impression, 135. 

word study, 136. 

study of figures and allu- 
sions, 138. 

definite aim in, 140. 

as expression, 141. 

in high school, 149. 

criticism of, 154. 

standard of a good recitation 

in, 155- 
to pupils, 158, 177, 178. 
quantitative study of, 165. 
total amount, 171. 
relation of quantity, quaUty, 

and time, 181. 
amount read by best schools, 

184. 
test of, 191. 
aloud, 193. 

relative value of, 197. 
hygiene of, 199-220. 
Recency in association, 18. 



INDEX 



237 



Recognition of speaking vocab- 
ulary, 77. 

Reeder, R. R., 112, 114. 

Representation of phonetic ele- 
ments, 81. 

Ribot, Th., s. 

Rochow, 109. 

Romanes, George J., 67. 

Sampler, 114. 
School doctor, 214. 
Scribner's Sons, Charles, viii. 
Script or print in the beginning, 

80. 
Seguin, 54. 
Sentences, 151. 

Shakespeare, Where the Bee 
Sucks, 131. 

Macbeth, 139. 

Hamlet, 145-147. 

reading aloud of, 150. 
Shaw, Edward R., 208. 
Shimer, Edgar Dubs, viii, 26, 

30, 31, 32. 

Sight words, defined, 121. 
principles governing selection 

of, 121. 
teaching of, 123. 

Silent reading, 25. 

Size of type in primers, 210. 

Smith, T. S., 64. 

Social impulse, i. 

Sounds, principles governing se- 
lection of, 122, 
teaching of, 125. 

Spacing and size of tjrpe, 208. 

Speller, Noah Webster's, 112. 

SpeUing, 85. 

Spencer, Herbert, 218. 

Stages of infantile language, 2. 

Standard of a good recitation in 
reading, 155, 195. 

Stebbins, Genevieve, 4. 

Story-telling, 162. 

Stout, G. F., 46, 47. 



Study, quantitative, of read- 
ing, 165. 

Style, hterary, in relation to 
hygiene, 216. 

Subordination in reading, 151. 

Supplementary reading, 100. 

Surface of paper, 202. 

Synthesis of sounds, 83. 

Talking stage of language, 8. 
Taste, reading to cultivate, 103. 
Taylor, Sir Henry, on reading 

Shakespeare aloud, 150. 
Test of reading, 191. 

every pupU, 196. 
Thomson, WUHam H., 40, 49, 

55, 57- 
Time in relation to quality and 

quantity, 181. 
Tinge of paper, 202. 
Total amount read, 171. 

impression in reading, 135. 
Tracy, Frederick, 2, 9, 10. 
Transition in reading, 152. 
Twofold aspect of reading, 77. 
Tyler, on gesture, 5. 
Type, size of, and spacing, 208, 

210. 

Unit of measure, in quantitative 
study of reading, 166. 

Value, relative, of reading, 197. 
Visual language, 12', 13. 
Vividness of impression in asso- 
ciation, 18. 
Vocabularies, children's, 9, 10, 

77- 
Voluntary association, 20. 

Vostrovsky, Clara, 87. 

Vulpius, 39. 

Wallace, Alfred Russell, 2. 
Ward, Edward G., 82. 
Weber, A., 205. 



238 



INDEX 



Webster, Noah, his speller, 112. 
Weisze, Christian Felix, no. 
Wernicke, 42. 

Wharton, William Parker, 30. 
What to read, 85-97. 
WUde, Oscar, 145, 220. 
Wissler, Clark, 89. 
Word study, 136. 
Words, kind used by children, 9. 
number used by children, 11. 



niimber taught first year, 170. 

physical basis of, 44. 

how recorded on the brain, 

47; 
physical basis of meaning of, 

SI- 
Wordsworth, We are Seven, 13. 

Lucy Gray, 132. 
Write-read method, 117. 
Wyche, Richard Thomas, 164. 






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